Notes From Exurbia

I Appear to be Getting the Hang of This

2012-02-09T22:43:00.000-05:00

Today was my 63rd birthday -- yay me -- and I spent part of the morning at the range with the CZ Lux. Since it was my birthday, I treated myself to some easy shots; went through the first dozen-plus rounds at the sissy distance of 30 feet. Then I cranked the target out to 40 feet for another twenty or so shots, and finished the box of 50 rounds at 50 feet. Iron sights, standing, no rest, and didn't even reel in the target to check how I was doing till I was done. Though I didn't really need to; by halfway through the session I could see significant daylight through the target and its cardboard backing.

So how'd I do?

I seem to be doing rather well.

Cowed

2012-01-29T11:11:00.000-05:00

There's a stock horse sport called working cow horse, in which a horse and rider face off against a cow in an arena. The object of the game is for the mounted pair to take control of the cow's immediate destiny, make it go down the arena side, turn back, turn left, turn right, turn in a circle, whether the cow wants to go along with the program or not. Some cows don't put up much resistance; some are defiant. Cow horses need speed, nimbleness, and spunk to do it well. The rider has to stay balanced and out of the horse's way; on a well-trained horse who's game for the game, s/he doesn't need to do a lot more than some subtle cuing.

Here's an example of doing it right, on a cow who isn't at first inclined to cooperate:

It's a sport that's exciting and fun to watch, and from its home in the American/Canadian West it's spread to Europe, Germany, for example. Of course, not everyone can afford to import a well-trained Quarter Horse or Paint, a competitor sprung from generations of horses bred to take it to the cow. So our European friends will press into service whatever breed they have to hand, dress up in full Western regalia, and go for it. Even if said breed is, say, a Haflinger, a smallish but sturdy flaxen-maned golden horse with that Western cow horse look but not, perhaps, quite the same Western cow horse attitude:

Having giggled her way through that video, a friend was moved to share this recollection:

That takes me back to a pony my parents leased for me on summer vacations when I was 8-11. Mr. Magee was a bay paint, about 13 hands, not very pretty, not very friendly, but a parent couldn't ask for a better babysitter. My friend's pony was a much prettier, friendlier and smaller chestnut paint mare. (I always felt I was on the lesser of the two on some childhood standard). We rode through old fields, orchards and cow pastures near the barn, but we never encountered cows in the cow pasture. Until one day we did. We, the young humans and the smaller pony, were in favor of exiting stage left when we came up on a bunch of them napping near some trees. They were BIG, and we didn't have a clue about cows. But Mr. Magee knew exactly what to do when one of them got to her feet. He took charge, walked toward the matron and informed her that she and her friends had better move on. Mrs. Bovine did not question Mr. Magee and we never saw the cows again.

In other words, that homely little pinto weren't no stinkin' beauty parlor Halflingwhatsiss.

Today's Target

2012-01-22T17:31:00.000-05:00

Man, it was cold at the range this afternoon! Well, not brutal, but cold enough that I had to wear thick floppy fleece gloves except when actually loading the magazine. So I shot only 24 rounds through the CZ Lux – loaded 25, but messed up the bolt action on one shot and dinged the cartridge so I had to extract and dispose of it. Oh, well.

I’d had a chat with the guys at Patriot Arms about my last adventure in CZ shooting, got some good advice, and adjusted my aim accordingly. Here are the results – again, standing, 50 feet, iron sights (which, according to the manual, were factory-adjusted for 50 meters):

I gotta gotta GOTTA try this baby out with a rest. If I can shoot this well with my lack of experience and shaky old hands, just imagine what a real marksman could do.

Another session with the CZ Lux

2012-01-17T14:47:00.000-05:00

Had a narrow window of free time and pleasant weather, so I zipped over to the range after horse chores for a little recreational shooting. Decided to leave the Colt in the bag and just go with the rifle. Wound up putting 24 rounds through it before the lowering sky and ticking clock forced me to pack up and depart.

So, how'd it go, second time around?

At 50 feet, standing, no scope, it went like this:

And two of those 10-shots were in the first set of five. No way am I this good! This gun is making me look better than I am.

I wanna go again. Soon. See if I can figure out why I tend to shoot high, and fix it. Obliterate that 10 circle. Yee-ha!

Bye-bye Ruger; hello CZ Lux

2012-01-09T17:07:00.001-05:00

I’ve traded in my Ruger Mark III pistol for a .22 rifle, a CZ Lux bolt-action, to be precise.

Why? Because (a) I’d been thinking about getting a target rifle anyway, and (b) the Ruger just wasn’t fun to shoot anymore, not since getting the Colt Woodsman.

It took a few shooting sessions with both pistols to see and understand what was happening, but the essence of it is, I shoot better with the Woodsman: smoother trigger pull leading to tighter clusters closer to the bullseye. Why? The prime cause, I believe, is that the dimensions of the Ruger put the first joint crease of my finger on the trigger rather than the pad, leading to jerking rather than squeezing the trigger unless I consciously readjust with each shot. The Woodsman fills my hand better, places my finger precisely right on the trigger.

So, after my last session at the range, where the differences were too plain to brush off, off I went to Patriot Arms, to offer the Ruger for trade-in and see what they had for .22 rifles. They had several, and after hefting some Papa Bears and Momma Bears, the CZ turned out to be my Baby Bear – it just felt right. It sure doesn’t hurt that both the shop staff and some online research indicate that this is a tack-driver of a target gun.

Looks good, too, don’t you think? And it’s a snap to break down for cleaning. Not to mention, the trade-in value I got on the Ruger was very fair. So I’m quite pleased, and hope to be even more pleased tomorrow or the next day or whenever I can get over to the range and try it out without freezing my butt off.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update, two days later:

Went down to the range this morning and tried out the CZ Lux.

My first five shots, taken standing on the pistol side of the range (my first shots ever with a rifle), at 50 feet, producd a three-inch spread. Wow! Why, you'd think I actually knew what I was doing. The bolt action, being out-of-the-box new, is still a little stiff but I was working it smoothly by the end of the session. Dropping, filling and reinserting the magazine was a snap. This gun is a sweetheart.

I put 50 rounds through it, with more or less the same results and an encouraging number into the 10 ring, even when I cranked the target out past 20 yards. I was tending to shoot high; dunno if that's the sights needing adjustment or (far more likely) my inexperience and perhaps not holding the rifle quite correctly. I'd do better with a rest for it, too; even propping my left elbow on the shelf in the pistol side where I was shooting, my aim wasn't entirely steady. Doggone shaky old hands!

Then I took out the Colt Woodsman and discovered one should shoot one’s pistol before one’s rifle; my right arm was too tired to keep my hand steady. By the third or fourth reload my hand had steadied enough to get several shots near or into the 10 at 50 feet, but by then it was time to pack it in and go tend the horses.

This is fun.

Liberal with a Gun

2011-12-17T12:29:00.002-05:00

I’m an unabashed liberal, and I’ve got a gun. Two, in fact. And one of them is a real prize.

‘Twasn’t always thus. I grew up and have lived most of my life in a weaponless family and friends milieu where gun ownership was not only nonexistent but often held in contempt. I continue to regard parts of the American gun world with dismay.

And yet, here I am today, owner of two pistols and member of the local fish and game club.

What brought this on? In essence, intimations of mortality. Timor mortis conturbat me.

I got to shoot a handgun way back in the mid-1980’s, enjoyed the experience, but for a number of reasons never pursued it then. Over the years I’d occasionally toyed with maybe taking up shooting, then put the idle thought aside – some day, maybe.......... And there were all those, for me, unpalatable aspects of the American gun culture – did I really want to wade into that world?

The cardiac scare I had in late April of this year reminded me that I am not, in fact, immortal; that I am going to die, not somewhere way off in the dim future, but relatively soon. My father died in the recovery room following open-heart surgery in his early 60s. I am a couple of months away from 63, with a much healthier heart, but still...... I don’t have all that much time left to waste, that much future to put things off to. Dammit, I’m running out of somedays. Ever since spring, I’ve been thinking off and on about dying – me, myself, DYING. Not obsessing, not fretting, but with a newfound awareness of the sands running out. If I’m going to do stuff, I better do it NOW.

There’s another issue, as well – I’ve been rolling along in a comfortable but narrow rut for quite some time: Working at home, doing some photography, taking care of the horses, seeing a few long-time friends, but otherwise not venturing outside of my snug little lair very often. I need to shake things up. To push my envelope. To get out of the rut, out of my comfort zone. And boy, this is one helluva way to roar past all that, innit? It was an odd feeling, to sit through the multi-hour gun safety course required for a Class A license (yup, I went all the way for concealed carry – same cost, same process as a more limited license), chatting with people who probably despise much of what I hold politically dear; to walk into that gun shop for the first time – me, the bleeding-heart liberal, the Obama-lover – and become absorbed in picking out just the right lethal weapon for me. (The guys at the shop couldn’t have been nicer to a self-confessed newbie, by the way.)

I’ve been granted membership in the local fish and game club, giving me range privileges so I can shoot my new toys. I plan to lie low as far as political discussions at the club go – envelope-pushing will go only so far – and simply enjoy developing a new skill, making new friends. I didn’t get a gun for self-defense; my town recently had its first murder in over 20 years, of a restaurant owner who made a habit of counting his money on the bar in front of his patrons. It’s target shooting I want to do, and have been doing over the last couple of months. And ya know what? It’s fun! It’s absorbing. When I shoot, it’s my whole focus, and everything else goes away. And the guys at the range have been sweethearts about helping a newbie, even a frumpy old woman newbie.

It still feels odd to be doing this. Still gives me at times a “Who are you, and what have you done with Laura?” feeling. I think that’s a good thing.

Ahhhhhhhhhh............. By now, anyone who’s (a) read this far, and (b) interested in what guns I bought will no doubt be hollering at the screen: “So what did you get anyway? What’s the real prize already? Give!” All righty, then.

First gun, what I picked out on my initial trip to the gun shop, with much helpful advice: A .22 caliber Ruger Mark III 22/45. It fits my hand well, has an easy trigger pull (a necessary consideration given the arthritis in my dominant hand), not much recoil, eats any ammo you care to feed it without jamming, and shoots with encouraging accuracy even in the wobbly hands of a newbie. I put 200 rounds through it the first time I shot it, and had a blast. Very tired hand and wrist by the end, but definitely a good time.

And the second handgun? Why get a second one when the first one suits me just fine? Why take a further step on the road toward gun nut damnation? Why, when on an ammo-buying trip I spotted it on the bottom shelf of a far-corner display case, did I succumb to temptation and (after researching it online; I’m not entirely bereft of my senses) did I pay twice what the Ruger cost me to own it?

Because it isn’t a new gun; it’s an old and very handsome Colt Woodsman Match Target .22 pistol. Its serial number (MT 23XX) indicates it’s from the first year of manufacture of the First Series Woodsman (the “Bullseye” model), which was made between 1938 and 1944. It came without the original box but with the original four-sheet manual. From what I’ve read online about it, it’s a finely crafted, very good target pistol. Well, okay, I’ve discovered it’s fussy about what it eats, but feed it the right ammo and it shoots beautifully. Looks mighty fine doing it too. Fits my hand even better than the Ruger.

And this particular pistol is extra-special in two ways: It has the original walnut “elephant ear” grips, which are valuable by themselves, plus a previous (its first?) owner had it engraved, making it one of a kind. The engraving included the person’s initials, which perhaps is why, even though it’s in fine shooting shape, it was mine for a price well under others I found online for the same make and model.

I guess collectors want stuff that looks fresh from the factory, but not me. To the contrary; the engraving tells me that “SAG” cared a lot for this pistol, and I feel a kind of kinship with that person in our appreciation of a finely crafted implement. This gun will be spending its time at the range, not in a display case.

If you’d told me a year ago I’d be writing this, I would have collapsed in giggles. And yet, here I am. Life is strange.

Rats and Drat and Bummer, Dude

2011-12-07T18:39:00.000-05:00

Today I took Tanya back to the shelter. No, for damn sure I didn't want to give up my sweet little girl, but Schooner left me no choice.

Tanya'd never been a big fan of the other cats, even before Tomba had to go back to the shelter; and while she got along with him she didn't seem at all upset once he was gone, so who knows whether she considered him a friend or just tolerated the big lunk? The other cats (except Sally) tend to buddy up, but she went her own way, complete with tiny soft growls if they got too close.

Still, Tanya seemed happy enough, especially when she could get lap time with me. We had a lovely cuddle just last evening, in fact, in the living room recliner. Then she got down, wandered off....

And a short time thereafter screaming crashing chaos erupted in the basement, rolled up the stairs, and tumbled out into the living room -- Tanya, hysterical, dashing under the couch in full-throated furious growling and keening; on her heels Schooner, puffed out, wild-eyed, taunting her just outside the couch till I flung a magazine at him and spooked him away. Poor Tanya was inconsolable (and vociferous about it) for the rest of the evening, even when Schooner wasn't coming back to harass her. Everyone else was freaked out, either hiding or slinking about looking fearful.

The wee hours of last night brought another eruption. Then this morning when I came down to feed breakfast I found a stench in the living room and Tanya miserably trying to groom off excremental smears on her nether regions. I have to suppose that Schooner pounced on the poor girl while she was in one of the litter boxes in the basement (and that's probably what happened the night before).

To Tanya's misery and humiliation add the horrors of a bath. Once I'd cleaned her and dried her as best I could, I let her slink away into hiding and called Matt at the shelter to Tell All. We agreed straight out she had to go back. Schooner's an instigator and, having found an entertaining victim to torment, isn't likely to back off; Smedley, seeing a chance for some fun, was getting in some swipes too this morning; there was no point in prolonging Tanya's plight as the butt of the pack.

It was a wrench, handing her over, but it's the right decision, for all of the household but especially for her. Yes, it's tough for an old cat like Tanya to find a new family, but she's so pretty, and such a sweetheart, I have great hopes of her landing in a good home soon. In the meantime, she'll be comfortable and much less stressed living in the shelter's big cat room (the other current residents Matt told me won't bother her). The other cats were totally freaked out by last night's and this morning's screeching chaos; they're settling down now, though, as the tension dissipates.

But I'm bummed. She was one of my favorites. I'll miss her.

Commander is Go! Ben? Not so.

2011-09-24T12:03:00.000-04:00

There’s a new twist in the will-I-ever-ride-Ben-again saga: the operative verb may be “can” rather than “will”. Can he safely carry a rider or is he no longer serviceably sound?

The question arises because I now have a delightful young woman passionate enough about riding, and hungry enough for a horse fix, to drive the roughly 35 miles from Winchester to Essex two or three times a week so she can saddle up my two pudgy old boys for ten or fifteen minutes each of walking around the ring, with maybe a couple minutes of trot thrown in at the end of that wild excitement. To date, Betsy’s had one riding session under my supervision to check her out while she checked out Ben and Commander, and one without me there (but with farm owner Maria observing from the house, unseen by Betsy). The verdict on Betsy is she’s just what the boys need to be brought back carefully into riding shape.

The verdict on Commander’s rideability is heck, yeh, he’s ready to boogie. Betsy loves him, thinks he’s a hoot. He needed to warm up out of a little stiffness but quickly loosened up and swung right out. This has been normal for him as long as I’ve had him (two years now!). As long as the founder doesn’t recur (and I’m being fanatical about that) he should work back into his usual Energizer-Bunny form, no problem.

The verdict on Ben’s rideability is not as encouraging. Now, he’s always had issues with kissing spines and hock arthritis as long as I’ve owned him. Even when in regular work, with a saddle on his back he needed to be handwalked before mounting for a few minutes to get his hind legs out of tiny mincing steps into a more swinging sweep; then with his rider aboard he’d be back to mincing again for some minutes before his hind feet were reaching well under him. The long layoff from work it seems hasn’t changed that.

What was different and worrisome on Betsy’s first ride was his reaction to being asked for the right-lead canter near the end of her trial ride. He’d walked well once warmed up; had even volunteered to trot several times before being allowed to do brief test spurts; had picked up a lovely easy left-lead canter, which after a few strides got mildly “Hey! Yippee! I’m running here!” hinky. Betsy lightly said no, walk please, and Ben complied, no problem. Then after another minute of walk we decided to test his right lead.

Oh-oh. Betsy asked on the curve of the turn. Ben flung himself into a half-dozen strides of agitated head-high wrong-lead jouncing mess. He calmed down back at the walk, but it was a sobering sight.

Two other observations: Betsy told me after her second ride that she did a minute or so of trot each way and that Ben was uncomfortable with the left diagonal. I’ve noticed over the last few months that when he and Commander are released for grazing onto the paddock, as he surges out onto the downward slope to the grass he sometimes catches his left hind toe in a mini-stumble.

I talked this all over with Ben’s long-time massage therapist, who used to work him over regularly when I was riding him. Lael pointed out that his left hind has always been weaker than the right, and we agreed that his current state of flabby unfitness isn’t helping it any. We also discussed his back, what signs of trouble to be alert for there.

Bottom line: The light exercise Betsy’s providing should help improve Ben’s physical condition, but there’s no question the boy has some problems, especially in his left hind. For everyone’s safety it may turn out to be best for Ben to retire completely.

As long as the food and love keep coming, I doubt this will bother Ben at all.

"Because I'm old and falling apart!"

2011-08-30T11:29:00.000-04:00

That’s what Justice Thurgood Marshall barked at a reporter who asked him why he was retiring from the Supreme Court. These days, I understand what he meant. Various parts and portions of the corporation I inhabit get ever more creaky, achy and recalcitrant. The worst is my right hand; arthritis has set up shop there and the damn thing hurts. The middle finger, especially after a stretch of immobility, or in cold and damp, would really rather not bend, thankyouverymuch. Oh, you insist? “Clonk”. The joints themselves don’t have that knobbly look; the fingers aren’t warped into twisted caricatures; but the hand ain’t what it used to be, and as a proofreader making hundreds if not thousands of pen strokes daily, I need it to work well and (mostly at least) painfree.

Yesterday I saw a therapist (acupuncture/massage), and he nailed why that hand, the middle finger especially, is so messed up – it’s the way I hold a pen, which is not the normal way you all do, but rather a weird grip which puts excessive strain on the middle finger through the hand and wrist right up into the forearm. By the time he was done massaging and pressing and realigning and freeing up this and that, well, it was NO FUN to go through but that entire appendage felt a lot better. I departed with a topical treatment, exercise instructions, recommendations for gloves to keep the hand warm, and orders to change the way I hold a pen.

Change the way I hold a pen and have done since I first learned to write, back when we used Archaeopteryx feathers for quills.

In essence, relearn how to handwrite.

Yeh, right.

Starting with yesterday afternoon and evening’s proofreading jobs, I did so. Awkwardly. Clumsily. Slowly. Even using the fattest pens I could find, it was hard. But the writing got done – shaky at times, lopsided, with a lurch here and a tremor there – and it was readable.

Even if I had to scratch it out and rewrite it. And rewrite it again.

The fingers did stray back to their old familiar form now and then. But that hurt, which helped to snap me out of error. Then it was back to merely slow and ungainly.

Sigh. For a while, anyway, my handwriting is probably going to look like a third-grader’s attempts at learning cursive.* Still, it should be worth it (and far more legible) in the long run; and I’m already feeling the benefits.

Sucks to get old, doesn’t it?

* Which reminds me – did you know they make grips to help teach kids how to hold a pencil correctly? Like this:

Since my weird pen grip involves wrapping the index finger over top of the implement and curling back around it, with the middle finger jamming the pen onto my thumb, this thing might actually help me retrain.

At some point I'll get it right

2011-08-21T15:55:00.001-04:00

Today’s adventures in grazing muzzles:

I sliced the hole in Commander’s muzzle about a quarter to a third larger, muzzled both boys, and turned them loose. Ta-daa! Commander, with some determined muzzle-wriggling, was able to get enough grass to keep him trying. Ben was doing fine. Both boys rolled, then resumed grazing.

Encouraged, and wanting to encourage Commander, I opened the gate from the paddock to the field. They gleefully scurried out there and dove into the forbidden fruit, with some more rolling interspersed. I went back to mucking, checking occasionally. They stayed head-down in the grass, but in a bit returned to the paddock.

Some minutes later Commander trotted in, fed up with measly rewards and mass swarms of bugs. Even with his muzzle removed he chose to stay in the run-in, so okay, just stay out of the side I’m mucking, little guy. Ben stayed out, but now he was galloping about. Was he enjoying his freedom to run, from field to paddock to run-in and back out? Or........

No. No, this wasn’t playful racing; this was Ben whipping himself into a freakout, probably over that THING on his face he couldn’t get off. After a couple of circuits so jazzed that I didn’t dare try to catch him, he rammed into the run-in beside Commander and stood still, sweaty and panting, long enough for me to talk him down a bit, then sidle up and get the muzzle off.

Phew! That was it, all right. He calmed right down. I did a quick adjustment on the straps and put Ben’s on the mighty Morgan, then led the boys back out.

Ta-daaaaaaaaaaaaa!!! They both stayed out grazing, calm and contented, till I’d finished chores and brought their midday mini-mashes to the gate. Well, “calm” – Commander did do a lot of pawing, as if to hurry the reluctant blades into the muzzle hole, but otherwise he seemed much happier. The Ben muzzle has a more open weave on the nose and the hole is an oblong roughly an inch by two inches, so the air-to-nostril flow is better and a vigorous grass-gathering effort is well-rewarded.

So, are we there yet? A lot closer to what will work, anyway. On the way home I picked up a couple of fly masks for the boys:

A Crusader with ears for Ben -- it’s a mask he’s worn before and does well in.

An Absorbine Ultrashield fly bonnet for Commander -- with that design I should be able to put it on over the grazing muzzle, or under it, whichever fits better. I went for the earless because I figure he’s less bothered by flies than Ben and has enough other stuff on his head hassling him without earhats too.

So, tomorrow we’ll try the new configuration and see how it goes. With lower temperatures and humidity, I’m hoping it will go well.

Commander gets a new grazing muzzle

2011-08-17T22:23:00.002-04:00

You all, my Dear Readers, may recall that my last attempt to use a grazing muzzle on Commander didn’t work out so well. It took no more than an hour for the thing to be destroyed. But I’d really like to let the boys have more time out on their grass paddock than the couple of 15-or-so-minute outings they’re currently getting per day, so I invested in a pair of muzzles – one for Commander, the other for Ben. Commander’s has a tiny central circular hole; Ben’s is oblong, larger, and should let him get more grass while still stopping him from tugging off the bottom of his buddy’s muzzle.

Today was the day I tried their new duds on the boys. First up was Commander.

He was PISSED! He knew exactly what it was and he was indignant when I put it on him! He kept twitching his head away or shoving it at me as I adjusted the thing, then when I walked away he came after me, trying to rub it off against the vicious cruel human (or maybe just knock me down so he could trample me to death in revenge). Then he went into the run-in and sulked.

Poor Ben just looked resigned and a bit befuddled when I put his on.

As it turns out, by the time I got to the barn and got them both muzzled, it was twilight and the mosquitos were buzzing. Neither horse was willing to spend any time out on the grass at all. I’d lead them out, they’d dip a muzzle into the grass, say “Screw this, I can’t get anything and the skeeters are swarming me” and bolt back to the run-in.

We’ll see how they do tomorrow midday. Normally when I let them out onto the paddock for a bit of grazing while I muck the run-in, they stay out for at least ten minutes before the various daytime insects harry them back into shelter. Will it still be worth their time to go out when they can’t gobble huge mouthfuls of grass?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update:

At midday Friday, with muzzles on both, Ben happily nibbled away at what made it through to his busy lips and teeth. Commander got frustrated fairly soon, quite trying, and trotted back to the run-in. Ben kept grazing even without his buddy there.

I took off both muzzles and put Commander back out. He dove into the grass and greedily chomped away. This time it was Ben, bug-bugged, who broke away first to flee into the run-in. I had to go out to Commander and lead him back when it was time to end his grazing spree.

Saturday midday: Let both out without muzzles and allowed them to graze freely for a few minutes; then put the muzzle on Commander. He was pissed, circled me demanding I take it off, when I walked away tried halfheartedly to graze, then said the hell with it and stomped back to the run-in, where I did remove the offending device. When he found no food in his run-in stall he tromped over to the water trough, sloshed his face around, and threw an innocent bucket into the trough. I was going to lead him back out onto the paddock for a few more minutes, but Ben came galloping back and they both crammed into Ben's run-in stall for a feverish grooming, so that was it for the grass today.

I need to make the hole in his muzzle larger. And kill every insect in Essex County.

Today I Rode Commander!

2011-08-09T15:27:00.000-04:00

Bareback!!

For an entire minute!!!

Maybe two!!!!

And we both escaped unscathed!!!!!

Crazy, wild, dashing bravado on my part; stoic heroic endurance on his, it was.

Sorta.

Actually it was a contemplated impulse on my part. I’d been toying with the idea of backing him for the last week, seeing how comfortable he looks on a half-Previcox daily. Silly daydreaming, no more – then today, with cooler temperatures, lower humidity, and a cheerful Morgan who marched soundly over to me from the water trough (where he’d been busy playing before I arrived, to judge by the water dripping off his forelock) spurred me to just do it.

I grabbed helmet, bridle and crop, dragged the mounting block out from its weed-choked abandonment next to the barn, bridled my steed and brought him out to the driveway, and swung aboard.

Be darned if the little guy didn’t march right off, walking freely, smartly, and with no hesitation or discomfort. We slogged through the high grass into the overgrown ring and commenced striding across it. Alas, this stirred up clouds of tiny pesky flying nuisances to annoy and offend Commander. But despite irritated head flips, he kept marching.

Greatly daring, I tapped his flanks with my heels. He stepped right into a short choppy trot . His normal short choppy trot. We jogged along for several strides: Commander, head up, head tossing, body saying “Sure, why not? How far, how fast?” Me, laughing, trying to steer my wandering steed more or less straight while trying to stay centered on the broad wiggly bare back under my wobbly self.

After a few seconds of such hair-raising excitement I rein-and-seat-tweaked the mighty Morgan back to a walk, exited the bug-infested ring, and slid off, still laughing. Commander looked pleased and proud. As well he should!

Where do we go from here? Not far, not fast. I want to see if he still looks as good when I go back to do evening chores, and tomorrow too; I want to see down the road a bit if I can take him off the Previcox entirely, or must maintain him on it indefinitely; and I for darn sure would like to see fewer bug swarms when next I try taking him for a ride.

But this was very, very encouraging. For both of us.

Getting away from it all for a while

2011-08-01T15:28:00.000-04:00

I'm stressed out, worn out, hollowed out by the debt ceiling/deficit drama.

I'm bummed out, grossed out, skeeved out by the monstrous fools and poltroons running this country headlong into disaster.

I'm checking out of caring about the whole hideous horror show for a while. Got to recharge, refresh, reanimate the spirit before taking up the fight once more.

I'm going to the beach.

And not just any beach -- the winter beach. Vast, serene, cool, capacious, spreading its ephemeral dance floor for any who brave the chill winds of winter to explore it.

I walk up the boardwalk crossing the dunes, and there before me sweeps the beach -- quiet, sparsely peopled, peaceful.

Even the waves stroking the shore are muted today.

The sand stretches out before me, limitless (or so it seems), calling to me to go onward, onward.

Horses and dogs, verboten from April through September, are welcome, and their humans make the most of that temporary liberty.

Sometimes other critters haul onto the beach too.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh............... So peaceful, so relaxing, so mutedly soothing is the winter beach.

The dune faces are at once eternal and ephemeral, dancing with wind and wave to and fro, now here, now there, now growing, now vanishing.

Flotsam rides stormy seas to land, lies stranded awhile, then on another storm surge vanishes back into the waters that hurled it forth.

Rocky headlands scatter stones into the sand.

The stones defy the sea, though in time they too will wash away.

Fluff and foam, wavelets lapping feebly against rock, easily repulsed yet in the vastly long run triumphant.

There's a special quality to the light over the ocean and its shore, in good weather and in bad.

People are drawn to the winter beach, undeterred by the cold sharp wind that rules it. They walk, they dig holes, they play fetch with dogs, they simply sit or stand and contemplate the ocean.

Yes, I think I'll go back to the winter beach for a while, walk away from all the madness, let the serenity fill my soul.

Riding Ben: A Confession of Cowardice

2011-06-18T16:25:00.002-04:00

I’m afraid.

I’m afraid to ride my lovely, sweet, well-trained, well-mannered Thoroughbred.

I may never get on him again. If I do, I may never again take him out of a walk.

And it’s not his fault; it’s me.

Way back in early May, before Commander’s laminitis blew everything equine to hell for me, I got on both boys seriatim for a short putter about the ring. I hadn’t been riding either horse much if at all since last fall, but neither one needs to be longe-line-worked into sanity before it’s safe to get on. They’re both steady old fellows who can be pulled out of the paddock for a ride a day, a week, a month after their last work, and not get over-excited about it.

First I rode Commander, who pitter-pattered about at walk and (briefly) trot for me in his usual small-strided fashion. Then it was time for Ben, he of the big, elastic stride; I walked him about for some minutes, getting him warmed up, then asked for a trot. He surged into a big booming TROT; I could feel his body under me saying “Yeh! Feels GOOD! Wheeee!”

Fear lanced through me. Instant ohmygod fear. Snap! Fear that he was going to get silly and stupid, as he will do once in a blue moon (and which has nada to do with his fitness level) and try to take off, maybe even buck. Fear that my aging, overweight, underfit, slow-reflexed self wouldn’t be able to ride through whatever silliness erupted under me.

Fear that I’d fall off and get hurt. Really hurt. Wreck-my-life hurt.

So I pulled him back to a walk – which he came back to easily, without a fuss; he’s really a good boy. I walked him around the ring once, to settle both of us, and got off, feeling that sick weakness fear leaves behind. I untacked him, told him what a fine fellow he is, and put away saddle and bridle, wondering whether I’d ever take them out for him again.

Sigh.......... If I were ten years younger, twenty pounds lighter, riding regularly, my muscles and reflexes tuned to the task, this wouldn’t have bothered me. Indeed, just last September I survived a much scarier experience on Ben – rode through it and kept going on him for another hour. I’ve made it a rule for a long time now, even before that bolt, to ride Ben only in my Aussie stock saddle, that is far more secure than an English saddle. If Commander comes back from his laminitis riding-sound, I’ll happily get on him, even bareback (in the ring; not hacking out in the fields, mind you), because I trust him to be sensible. And besides, he’s nowhere near as BIG as Ben is.

But Ben? I’ve lost my feeling of safety on him, my desire to throw a leg over his back again. Perhaps last September’s scare has stayed with me at a visceral level I hadn’t been aware of. Perhaps it’s a keener consciousness of mortality developing in me as I age into my 60s. Perhaps part of it is that riding just doesn’t matter that much to me any more; the care and feeding and being with and observing and loving have become what fulfills me in horse ownership. Certainly a large part of the passion for riding died in me when Nick, my first horse, died in September 2005; as marvelous as Ben is, and as much as I adore him, riding just hasn’t been the same for me since then.

Further thoughts, in response to a friend reciting her own fears: I’ve come off a handful of times over the years, never seriously hurt, though one time when Ben stumbled badly and I tumbled over his shoulder I got my bell rung hard enough that the barn owner drove me home and called later to make sure I was still (more or less) all there. I used to be much braver; many years ago I rode my dear departed Nick with a broken (not from horse fall) arm, in fact.

But I’m at that stage in my life when I’m more likely to break, not bounce, if I fall. And I am the sole support of two horses, nine cats, and a mortgage, with no disability insurance. It does give one pause.

Whatever the cause, singular or multiple, the effect is this: I am afraid to ride Ben, and may never do so again. This doesn’t bother him, but it saddens me.

And if I do ride him again, we for sure will never do this:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update: That post also went out to friends as an email, and a number of them responded. It would appear I hit some nerves. Their thoughtful replies I post below. First, from fellow horse owners/riders/lovers:

Christine:
So I've never come off one.......and you know it's inevitable I will!!!!! So as I start to ride my now five-year-old, high-strung mare, Barbie, instead of my laid back 20-year-old gelding, Buck, I'm getting fearful waiting for it. And the other night I was on Buck and Matt was riding Barb and I was getting myself into a tizz because Buck gets nervous around Barb because his eyesight's poor and the indoor's shadowy and Matt's training on her. So after about 20 minutes of just jogging him, I was done. I can't risk a hand/arm injury. I do LOVE the grooming, taking care of them. But I don't want to be fearful. So I completely get you!!

Vicki:
I feel your pain. I too have lost my desire to ride. It really isn't anything to do with Maggie, except that she isn't Nelson. I know you can't compare, but I do, and I shouldn't. I trusted him with my life - and the life of my son - unborn and until the age of almost 5. She is perfectly fine, but has a stupid spook that involves her running out from under you sideways (and occasionally backwards) that scares the crap out of me. I too just love the care and observation, but it is turning into an expensive hobby. Hang in there and enjoy them as much as you can.

Ruth:
I don’t think I’d call you a coward, Laura. You are being very honest and fear is a huge factor when we are riding. You are brave to admit it and certainly smart to listen to your visceral feelings about the fear.

If you enjoy caring for your horses, then that is what you should do. Forget the riding and enjoy them for what joy they bring to you.

Francie:
Oh Laura! I so understand.

I don't climb aboard the beasties anymore either. :o(
Pretty much the same reason too. Slow reflexes,the perpetual weight struggle,I just don't have the balance, agility,athleticism....in short,I feel afraid while I'm up there.

((Hugs))

And then, the reflections on a non-horseperson, upon life in general:

Ed:
I read your “confession” as a lament for the passing of something fun, and dear, in your life. That’s life, as the sage says. But I’m responding to suggest to you that the label “cowardice” is just plain wrong and, worse, saddles you (no pun intended, actually) with unnecessary guilt, as though your realization that you feel unsafe (insecure) on Ben’s back is a stain on your character. Not so! It is, for better or worse, an acknowledgement of aging. I will be 65 this summer, I feel fine, yet there are several things I’ve enjoyed in my life that I shall not do again. And they all involve matters where physical dexterity and balance and physical competence are involved.

I have all my life loved to go fast: I raced cars back in the muscle car days, rode and raced on my motorcycle, and loved it. But, if I were ever to ride a motorcycle again, it will be to putt-putt about the scenic roads of New England, not to race at breakneck speed. I no longer feel comfortable doing that. Likewise, racing in a car. I drive well, and sanely these days. It’s been a long time since I have lived up to my pledge to myself, made when I was about 21, that I would hit 100 mph in my car at least once every day of my life. Believe it or not, I lived up to that pledge for many years after that. But I wouldn’t think of doing so now. The excitement I used to feel at 100 mph would be fear and anxiousness now – what if something goes wrong? – and so there would be no joy in it.

Less extreme, I no longer pursue a favorite summertime hobby: getting out of my car alongside a fast-moving alluvial stream somewhere in New England and hopping out on the rocks midstream, making my way from one rock to another, skipping, jumping, sometimes quickly planning out a three- or four-hop route to make it from point A to point B. Great fun! I’ve done it with my kids since they were young, and long after they grew up. But not now. I know I am no longer light on my feet enough to feel safe doing that. And, good grief, suppose I slipped and went ass over teacups into the water, or worse, landed on a rock? My aging bones would not handle it well.

But cowardice has nothing to do with it. Rather, simple mature acceptance that I have passed the point in my life where I can prudently take those physical risks. I have neither the physical prowess for it any longer, and, just as important, my nervous system can’t handle such “excitement” anymore.

This is all a part of aging gracefully, something I hope to do. I don’t intend to curtail all activities; just the ones I am no longer comfortable doing. Nor will I let myself slide into idle senescence. But I will decline to do what is no longer comfortable for me to do. (In 2006, I won the NCRA Speed Contest for the sixth time. A great day! But I announced my retirement that day from speed contests. I knew it was time to quit.)

So please accept the changes in you that come with aging, Laura. Don’t lacerate yourself over this presentiment of mortality. You’re in good health, you’ve got your mind intact – not everyone does! – and so you can savor the wisdom and experiences you have accumulated, and go on enjoying the things you love, like horses, and taking care of them and loving them, and riding them if you choose to – or not.

Plan C for Commander -- It Works!

2011-06-06T21:48:00.000-04:00

When last we left our plucky Morgan and his big doofus buddy, I was wondering how the heck to get Ben onto the paddock grass while providing bug-shelter for him, yet keep Commander off the tasty but perilous green stuff. I had a Plan C, but had to run it by the farm owners.

Ran it by; got approval; did it – and it works just fine. How? Here’s how: The run-in structure has two stalls on the right and on the left, divided by a hay/tool storage aisle. In back of the right-hand stalls, a few feet lower, are a small room that can store hay, and a larger room, once a stall called the Mackie House (for its former inhabitant) and currently used for hay storage. The MH has a door on either end and can open to either side of the complex; on my side it opens into the paddock.

So: move the hay bales and the pallets they’ve been resting on from the MH into the old hay storage room; clean out the accumulated cruddy moldy waste hay (four wheelbarrow loads; a task I’d been meaning to get around to sometime in any case), hang water buckets, stock the MH with several flakes of hay, secure the Dutch doors to the MH on my side open, and voila! A bug refuge and watering hole for Ben. And when Commander’s inside the run-in he can see Ben in the MH.

I was going to insert photos in this post to illustrate the new setup, but there were just too many. Here’s a link to my Webshots album showing the whole thing. I’ve put captions as well as titles on each shot to explain what they show.

All the prep work got done yesterday; all was ready to go when I arrived at the barn today. I distracted Commander with a handful of grain (laced with his morning dose of isoxsuprine) while I brought Ben out of the barn first and got him settled in his new digs. I’d worried that my timid TB would be wary of going into the dark recess of the MH, but he walked in with only a slight hesitation, and clearly approved of the joint. With the electric tape gate to the paddock hooked safely in place, I brought Commander out of the barn and into the run-in to see Ben inside the MH. He looked, said “All right then” and dove into his hay. Phew!

Originally I’d left the upper Dutch door between the MH and the hay aisle open so the bay boys could see each other easily. Alas! Ben couldn’t resist reaching in to steal hay – even hay that was just the same, in fact from the same darn bale, as what he had in his new stall; and the upper door had to be shut and latched against his thievery. Commander was unfazed by this new barrier to seeing his buddy, so that was all right then.

I had them out in the new configuration from noon to around 7:00 p.m. – and yes, it was safe to let Ben have paddock access for so long even though I’d taken both boys off the grass three weeks ago when the laminitis struck. Why? Partly because the bugs are annoying enough that he spent far more of his time inside eating hay and schmoozing with Counterpoint than he did outside grazing; partly because for the last week I have been giving him a daily bucketful of grass hand-reaped by me (scissors work surprisingly well; certainly better than a dull scythe, I’ve found), so his belly is well primed for the greenery.

Oddly enough, the diciest moment today was getting Ben off the paddock to bring the boys in for the night. His white friends were out on their field grazing and he got mildly hysterical (abandonment terror? eagerness for supper?) when he saw me enter the run-in apron and approach Commander, started running and bucking. So I haltered Commander and, much to the grass-deprived Morgan’s disgust, held him back from charging into the paddock while I opened the gate. Ben bolted through, still wired. I resecured the tapes; took Commander’s halter off; and let them indulge in a frantic session of grooming until they’d calmed down enough to lead in.

So, success! I’ll continue bringing them in overnight, at least until Ben’s got the paddock grazed down to dry nubbins. Then it should be safe to let the boys stay out 24/7, perhaps even to let Commander out into the paddock for a few hours if not all the time. Of course, by then we’ll probably be getting into greenhead season, when B&C will have to huddle inside during daylight or be eaten alive.

And the field? We’ll see.

So Much for the Grazing Muzzle

2011-06-02T18:16:00.000-04:00

I tried putting the grazing muzzle on Commander today, to deter him from picking at the stubble along the fence line and to see how he’d react to it. He wasn’t happy but he didn’t throw a fit. He didn’t like trying to groom Ben with it, that’s for sure.

After I’d observed him for a while I went back to stall-cleaning and he and Ben hung out in the run-in. Looking out the window now and then, it appeared that they were playing some form of face-fight/halter tag. When I went out at last to fetch them I discovered that the entire bottom of the muzzle was broken right off the woven web around the nose and lying discarded in the run-in.

When it was safe for Commander to do more than a sedate walk, I’d planned to let them start going into the paddock, Ben free to graze and Commander muzzled to forestall his getting more than tiny tidbits of grass. Looks like it’s time for Plan B, except that my Plan B has problems: I could put Ben in the paddock, with the electric tape gate closed to keep Commander in the run-in, and with a hay bag hung on the run-in wall so he could eat and see Ben at the same time. But if it’s buggy, and it is buggy now, Ben would want to flee into the run-in. So that won’t work.

Hmmmmmmm............... There might be a Plan C, but that would require some changes in run-in configuration and hay management for the four horses. Will have to ponder, and consult with the farm owner.

Commander: No News Is Good News

2011-05-27T15:59:00.002-04:00

Which is why I didn't post a Commander update yesterday. He’s doing very well, very comfortable on his heartbars. He was never really off his feed during all this, but I think his appetite has picked up a bit since the shoeing. He’s bright-eyed, shiny-coated, and eager to go out! Now!

Well, of course he can’t have lots of turnout; he’s not supposed to have any until he’s on one bute per day, in fact, which I’m starting today: lunch bute as usual, but none for supper tonight. I have cheated a bit, put him and Ben out yesterday and today for the half hour or so it takes me to clean their stalls, and he’s been a good boy, not gotten silly and rambunctious.

What he has done is spend the vast bulk of his time outside in vigorous grooming sessions with Ben, way more than they’d been doing, in fact, before the heartbars went on. Is it a consequence of his feet feeling better, that he can spare a thought now for itchy withers? Or is it the hot humid weather that makes the boys’ coats call out for a good tooth-scrubbing? He and Ben both have rubbed tails, despite their being on continuous wormer, and they’ll be getting ivermectin tonight or tomorrow to deal with that, but as for the rest of their bodies’ need to be scratched? I dunno why; I just know they derive deep satisfaction from their grooming sessions, whether outside or inside their run-in stalls.

More inside, actually, today; the biting bugs have sprung from nowhere into pesky annoyance. Yesterday and today I’ve brought Commander in first, turning him loose on his mini-mash, then running back out to release Ben into the now-lush paddock, to gobble the greenery until Commander came to notice his abandonment and started yelling. Yesterday, oh joy, the Morgan seemed not to realize his buddy wasn’t present across the aisle; his hay was enticing enough, once the mash was devoured, to keep him happily oblivious of his solitary state. The temptation was strong to leave Ben outside, but I couldn’t take a chance on Commander deciding to freak out over his absence, so in Ben came, despite his reluctance to leave all that wonderful grass. Today, though, was a different story. Today a bug-bugged Ben fled the paddock for the shelter of the run-in even before I went to collect him; today he was positively pleased to be going back to his stall.

So there you have it: early days, not out of the woods yet, don’t get cocky, etc. etc., but things are looking good; and unless something dramatic happens, unless some major milestone is passed (or unless I feel an overwhelming need to blather again), I think the Commander updates can go on hiatus.

Toot, Toot, Tootsies: Goodbye to Pain

2011-05-25T13:26:00.000-04:00

Commander got his heartbars today, and he approved. Yea, verily did he approve.

I had to zip up to the vet’s office to pick up a CD of the x-rays and tote my laptop to the barn so Ken, my farrier, could study the current rotational state of the hooves. Once he’d seen what he needed to there, and checked out the old set of heartbars from Commander’s 2006 bout of founder, kindly loaned to me by the boy’s previous owner, Ken got to work and I got out of his way, back to my car to work on paper while he worked on steel.

And did he ever work! Ken took plenty of meticulous time over getting the heartbars just right, then on they went, along with Equi-Pak padding – neat stuff! It sets up quickly and provides a cushion elastic enough to offer comfort, yet strong enough to provide support and not compress to uselessness over time. Plus, it’s an attractive sky-blue color, adding a dash of drama to Commander’s stride. It’s also easy stuff to cut a hole into for drainage if Commander should happen to develop an abscess, which Ken warned me could happen, though he thought it unlikely.

So the old Morgan got his new shoes. And off walked Commander as if the laminitis had never happened. Yay!

Now, we still need to be cautious, not let the boy get wild and crazy and overdo things while the inflammation runs its course, dies down and dwindles away. So his turnout will increase gradually, carefully confined to the small space at the run-in; he’ll stay on bute for its anti-inflammatory benefit, for some time to come; but I am convinced we’re on the upswing and all will be well.

Commander Post-X-rays Update

2011-05-23T20:18:00.000-04:00

And the news is cautiously good!

Commander does have some added rotation since his 2006 x-rays, but it is only a bit, and he still has enough sole to do fine once he’s over the acute phase. He’ll be going into heartbars on Wednesday. That’s the shoeing that worked for his previous founder, and my vet and farrier agree it’s the way to go at this point. His previous owner tells me that with heartbar shoeing Commander went from “Is it time to put him down?” to riding sound in six weeks.

With no bute in him since Saturday midday, you could see he was less comfortable, not moving quite as freely as yesterday; but Commander was and is still bright-eyed, eating and drinking well, sucking up to any human who’ll scratch his proud neck, and very willing to follow me out of his stall – heck, whenever we were pointed toward the exit he tried to drag me outside. He stood calmly with his front hooves up on wooden blocks for the x-rays; behaved like a perfect gentleman, in fact, for the whole process of examination and treatment. The x-ray machine hooked into the vet’s laptop and we could see his rads within seconds of them being taken. Not only that, but Kelly will be emailing them to me, and I can email them in turn to my farrier to have when he comes to put the new shoes on in two days. How cool is that?

My buteless Commander was even able to stand (with an occasional bit of fussing and hoof tugging) on a single forefoot to have each front shoe pulled, which the vet did gently, nail by careful nail, to give him some recovery time between the pulling of the old shoes and the nailing on of the new. Once they were off she showed me by the impressions on the pads inside how the rim of the plain shoes he’d been wearing weren’t offering him any real interior hoof structure support; how the frog was doing a lot of the work of weight-bearing against the protective pad. Then she put new pads and wraps on to keep him comfortable until Wednesday. Once everything was done he got a shot of Banamine, and you could see within minutes he felt just fine, thank you! That stuff is a miracle.

Plan for now: Bute, one tonight, one tomorrow, two on shoeing day and for a day or two afterwards, then taper to one for a few days, always with an eye to how comfortable he is, adjusting accordingly. Stall rest: Pretty much for tomorrow and shoeing day, and for a day or two afterwards, then judicious turnout, always with the goal of quiet light self-exercise that doesn’t stress the fragile tissues. Until he can go out he should get some short easy sessions of hand-walking, a prescription my farrier is strongly in favor of.

I dragged Kelly down to the paddock to look at the grass nubbins along the fence line. Verdict: Too short to harm him; if he wants to entertain himself picking at them, he should be okay. I will need to weed-whack the longer grass outside the fence that he could reach if he knelt down and snaked his head under the lower electric wire.

So, all in all, encouraging, I would say.

Sunday: Taking the Next Step With Commander

2011-05-22T15:08:00.004-04:00

With trepidation, today I withheld the bute from Commander’s midday meal. His last dose was about 1:30 or so on Saturday, and he looked good; in fact the step down from the barn to the driveway seemed not to faze him at all today. He was moving just fine on his limited turnout.

Very limited turnout today, only 15 minutes or so, because he would not stop picking at the grass nubbins along the fence line, as he has on previous outings. Nubbins they may be, but apparently there was enough there to keep him working on them, and I did not dare let him keep at it.

Which set up another test for Commander: Could he be inside without Ben? The Morgan came back to fresh hay and his midday mini-mash of Speedi-Beet, bran, regular supplements, and medications (yum! no grain at all now), which kept him occupied as I worked on Ben’s stall across the aisle, ever alert for any sign of a separation-anxiety meltdown. Other than occasional trips to gaze out his window, he was fine. When Ben’s stall was ready I went out to collect the big lug, and let him hand-graze for a bit after we left the run-in. So Commander was all alone; no Ben, not even a second-best human, to keep him company; peace reigned as Ben grazed....

“NEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Okay, Commander had noticed his abandonment. I hustled Ben inside, let the boys sniff noses through Commander’s stallfront chainlink mesh, then put the Thoroughbred back into his stall, grained him, and that was that.

Which points to a strategy for giving Ben more time on turnout: Take Commander out first, to forestall any abandonment freakout; leave them out as long as it’s safe for Commander; then bring him back to the distractions of food and let Ben stay out until the Morgan starts getting upset about it. Which of course will require me to be on hand, ready to reel in Ben at the first sign of Commander losing it, sigh.

I’ll be checking on Commander in about two hours, and again around 10:00 p.m., and if he’s in significant distress I will bute him, vet visit Monday morning regardless.

Fingers crossed!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update:

Checked Commander around 5:30. He looked just as good as he did at midday. Left him unbuted, just gave him his evening mash with the isoxsuprine and U-7. Left late evening and breakfast hay flake-piles out for the farm owner to give him, and for once I am going to have an early night, not need to do late-P.M. bedcheck, hurrah!

If you had told me a week ago things would be looking so good so fast I would not have believed it possible. Let’s hope his trajectory continues in its present course.

Commander: Second Day on One Bute

2011-05-21T18:29:00.001-04:00

He’s doing well. Remarkably well, given how painful he was just one week ago. If there was a hint of tentative discomfort in front today, it was so minuscule that it didn’t stop me from letting him go out. He was cautious about taking the 6-inch step down from the barn to the driveway; moved off his landing foot quickly; but other than that he walked free and easy, and handled the hardness of the run-in apron with no problem, though after a while he did prefer to stay on the mats inside.

It was good for him and Ben both, to get them out for about 45 minutes. They spent a lot of the time grooming each other. I was tempted to leave them out when their stalls were done, on this lovely warm sunny day after a week’s worth of chilly rain and drizzle, while I drove over to the co-op to buy shavings, but caution overruled impulse. That would have added around another hour to their turnout time; too much, too soon, to risk a setback for Commander’s wellbeing.

There was a farrier at the barn shoeing another boarder’s horse, and I visited with him for a while. I mentioned one friend’s suggestion of putting shoes on backwards. He said it can be helpful, as can other kinds of therapeutic shoeing; what approach one takes depends on each individual horse. When I mentioned my farrier’s name, the prompt response was “Ken Brown! I know Ken; he’s a great farrier!” And other comments indicating that I in fact have a damn fine farrier. You can imagine how reassuring that was to hear.

Anyway, if Commander is looking as good tomorrow as he was today, I will be tempted to withhold his midday bute dose, so that Kelly can assess him completely clear of the drug on Monday morning. If he seems clearly ouchier than today, I will give him the bute.

I spent some time with him after getting back from the co-op run, just neck-hugging and skritching him. He loved it, and when I stopped looked to me for more. He was first dubious, then appreciative when I took a damp paper towel to his eyes to clean away their perennial watery discharge and eye-corner crud. I think we’re developing a closer relationship over the course of his convalescence.

Friday Commander Update

2011-05-21T02:37:00.005-04:00

So, 24+ hours after his last dose of bute, how did Commander look at midday on Friday?

No, no, he didn’t go out, the ground is just too wet for that; that picture’s from last spring; but that’s about how good he and I are both feeling right now!

His wraps are still holding up amazingly well, but the sole over the pad is wearing thin, so I wrapped right over them with Coflex. He had a harder time holding up his left foot, all his weight on his right, during that process, but that’s the hoof that’s always been the more sensitive ever since his previous bout with founder, according to his previous owner. All in all, he is looking remarkably good.

So, he's done very well indeed with just one gram of bute in 24 hours; if he’s as free-moving Saturday as he was on Friday, he’ll get one dose at midday, then none on Sunday, as long as he continues to be comfortable; and we’ll see how he looks on Monday morning.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bedcheck update: Looking good!

Thursday: Commander is One Smart Cookie

2011-05-19T17:54:00.000-04:00

Midday report: On two bute per day, Commander looks very good indeed. I will probably withhold tonight’s dose and see how he looks tomorrow after 24 hours since his last dose. If at all possible he needs to be at least 24 and hopefully 48 hours since his last dose by the time he’s seen by the vet on Monday morning.

I’ve added Finish Line’s U-7 gastric aid supplement to his diet to protect against bute-induced ulcers. If he’s going to need to be on it for a considerable time, I’d like to get his stomach buffered before any ulcers begin to blossom.

Weather permitting, he gets a short time outside, and today the weather permitted. If I hadn’t watched him like the proverbial hawk and shut him down at the first hint of exuberance, our trip down the driveway would have been quite a spectacle of explosive Morgan caracoles. But he knows what the chain under his chin means, and all it took were swift light tweaks on the lead line to remind him “Behave!” and he walked politely.

But that’s not why I call him one smart cookie; no, it’s what he did once he was set free. After trying to graze on the already depleted nubbins he could reach along the fence line (sorry, Commander; there’s nothing there worth contorting yourself for), he started face-fighting with Counterpoint, first in the middle of the concrete run-in apron, but very quickly he moved to a much more comfortable position:

Yup, that’s right, he went into the run-in, onto the rubber mats, and reached around the corner to play. That beige bar you see at the top of the photo is the bottom edge of the swing-up window in Counterpoint’s stall; I had to shoot the boys from up there in the barn because any time I came outside the white boys rushed the fence to beg for food or release onto their field.

Here’s a clearer look at just how Commander positioned himself:

It’s amazing these guys don’t actually do any damage to each other given how ferociously they go at it:

So Ben and Commander had their 30 to 45 minutes outside, and walked back in a fair bit calmer than they went out. Hopefully I’ll be able to get them out every day, hopefully for longer stretches at a time if Commander isn’t set back by short intervals on ground less forgiving than his well-bedded, wood-floored stall.

Tomorrow is another day.

Commander Update: A Bridge Too Far?

2011-05-17T15:19:00.005-04:00

Commander didn’t get a dose of bute at bedcheck last night, so when I saw him at midday today his last one had been about 24 hours ago, and it showed.

Oh, he wasn’t anywhere near the kind of distress I’d seen on Saturday; he was standing foursquare, taking good-sized steps, and not reluctant to move; but he was clearly feeling enough of an increase in discomfort to be stiffer in walking and turning on his forehand than yesterday. I hadn’t planned to put him out today in any case, given how wet it is; but for darn sure he wasn’t going to go out on a gravel drive and concrete run-in apron looking like that.

So off he went to an empty stall across the aisle, which he puttered around in between bouts of hay-munching; back to his stall, where the absentminded human realized it’s a lot easier to add a new bag of shavings to a mucked-out stall before you put the horse back in; over to the empty stall again; finally back home, where he dove into his hay. It seemed to me that he was moving somewhat better, in fact clearly better, by the fourth trip across the barn aisle, so perhaps some of his stiffness comes from being an older horse on stall confinement in damp, chilly weather; and I’ve noticed over the last few days that he also looks stiffer when he first gets up from lying down, so who knows how much of a role mere inactivity plays? – but that’s not the entire cause. The laminitis ain’t done with him yet.

Sigh. I suppose such setbacks are only to be expected. Hopefully when I see him tonight he’ll be back to looking “Just fine, thank you!” with the bute back in him. He’ll get a bedcheck dose; two doses again on Wednesday; then we’ll try again to cut back to one. I’ll also do a bit of handwalking in the barn to get the juices cautiously flowing on gentle footing.

The continued good news is that Commander’s bright-eyed, cheerful, eating and drinking well, sucking up his meds without a problem, in good weight, and shiny-coated. Ben is also handling his companion captivity pretty well; other than screaming for attention when I arrive, looking longingly at the exit when I move him between stalls, and walking manure-churning circles in his bedding, he’s not a problem.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bedcheck update:

Commander was lying down when I arrived. He got up and looked horribly stiff. I let him move about, loosen up some, as he chose for a couple of minutes, then walked him across the aisle to the spare stall, circled it to turn, walked back, turned again and went back across the aisle, and he was moving waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better when I took the halter off and let him go free over there – just needed to work out of the lying-down stiffness. He didn’t hesitate to follow me when I first asked him to move, either. It’s rainy, chilly, penetrating-damp weather around these parts, been so for the last few days, and I really do think that’s affecting the old man. He might could be a bit tentative still in his front feet, but he’s markedly better than at the midday check. Darn close to what had me feeling good Sunday and Monday.

Tomorrow is another day.

Monday Commander update

2011-05-16T15:20:00.000-04:00

So what’s the report for today?

Last bute: 13 hours before.

Quality of movement: Free and easy.

Spirits: High.

He did get to go out for half an hour while I cleaned the stalls, and there were a couple of times on the walk down the drive that if it weren’t for the chain shank I think he’d have gone all boinky on me:

Horse: Head high, neck starting to snake, eyeing the human – “Ima feel good! Ima gonna...”

Human: “GrrrrrrrrrrNO!” *shank-twitch*

Horse: Subsiding – “Oh, well, if you put it like that. Say, there’s some grass over there! Howzabout we – Oh. You sure? Oh. Well, if you insist...”

Once he was there he settled down and alternated between eating hay in the run-in (standing on shavings-covered rubber mats) and face-fighting with Counterpoint. If he’s hyper about heading out tomorrow I won’t take a chance on him getting rambunctious but will turn right around and put him in an empty stall while cleaning his, rather than take a chance on his overdoing it while things are still fragile. Hopefully, if he keeps going the way he’s going, we can get back to dry-lot turnout as soon as the pads come off.

He got his midday bute and as usual inhaled it along with his pittance cup of grain. On his delighted vet’s advice, based on yesterday’s report, I will NOT be buting him tonight but instead will switch to once a day dosing, two days ahead of schedule, and we will see what we will see, but all in all I’m feeling:

Commander update

2011-05-15T13:48:00.000-04:00

So how is the old man today? How did he look 13 hours after his last dose of bute? How am I feeling about how he’s feeling?

Shout!

When I arrived at the barn he was up, bright-eyed, moving freely, and eager for food, attention, and to go out! Now! There’d been a little rain overnight and the ground was damp in patches but not soaked, so by golly, out he went! He strode down the graveled drive with a big free-swinging walk, puttered around the run-in happily, greeted Ben when he followed, felt good enough to stand at times with one hind foot cocked and both forefeet comfortably planted, and spent much of his 30 to 45 minutes outside face-fighting with Counterpoint over the water trough. This was a happy horse!

Brought back in to his tidied stall, he gobbled up his medicine-laced grain, licking the bucket of every trace, and dove into his hay. I left feeling a whole lot more confident than I had just 24 hours ago.

Half an hour after I left, the heavens opened and a soaking rain started pounding down. How’s that for timing?

Yes, yes, I know; things could still go south in a hurry; he’s not out of the woods yet; there’s still a long course of rehab ahead; there’s no guarantee; blah blah blah............

Shout!

Well, this just stinks

2011-05-14T23:30:00.000-04:00

Commander’s having a go-round with laminitis. Yep, my previously foundered horse is in danger of it happening again. And I was being so careful about the spring grass!

Last year, with a slow, cautious introduction process, Commander adjusted to grazing without any problem, went through summer and fall living happily on his fields, and was sound enough, in fact, to go barefoot for a couple of months toward the end of that time, till the ground froze hard and he needed the extra buffer of front shoes.

So this year, while always mindful that Commander would require more caution than the other horses, I felt comfortable getting him onto grass, first for brief times on the boys’ near paddock, gradually increasing their grazing time till they were doing fine out there for an hour and a half, until the grass there was grazed down to nubbins. At that point I opened the gate to the field – only for a few minutes at first; most of their grass time was still in the paddock. Over weeks the field time edged up to 20 or 30 minutes. It was about the same schedule I’d followed the year before with no problem.

This year, though, there’s a problem. Was my timing off? Is the grass, for whatever reason of sun/rain/temperature, richer than last spring’s? Is now-21-year-old Commander’s metabolism altering as he ages? I dunno, but....

On May 7th I took a picture of the two boys galloping gaily out to their paddock, a sight I've been seeing every day since I started the incremental process of getting them adapted to grazing.

But in the last few days Commander, I noticed, was no longer dashing out; he was stopping to eat almost as soon as he got through the gate. And yet, released from the paddock into the field, or called in from it for his measly two cups of daily grain, he could and would run with enthusiasm. Walking around as he grazed, or back in the run-in dry lot, he seemed all right. Then yesterday he trotted in instead of running, and I thought he looked just a tiny bit, well, not quite right in front, especially on the hardness of the run-in apron. So I called the vet’s office and made an appointment for a Monday checkup.

Today I arrived, went to let the boys out, took one look at how Commander was moving, emitted some expletives, and dashed back to my car for my cellphone. The vet arrived within the hour, checked him over, and confirmed that he’s having a laminitis flareup. On the plus side: the palpable heat in his feet wasn’t too bad and he wasn’t rocked back on his hindquarters in the classic founder stance; there was no sign that his soles were in immediate danger of being penetrated; and as soon as Kelly Vetwrapped thick foam pads on his front feet he looked more comfortable. In fact, when I led him up the graveled driveway to the barn to start him on stall rest, he walked easily, with hardly any suggestion of pain in his front feet. By the time I left the barn, an hour or so after the vet had departed, Commander was moving about his stall looking darn near normal (or as normal as a horse can look with wrappings reminiscent of clown shoes on his front feet).

He got a shot of Banamine for immediate relief, and I got medicines and instructions for him: Three days of bute twice a day, three days of bute once a day, then off the bute and recheck by Kelly a week from Monday. Daily dose of Thyro-L on the premise that we could be dealing with insulin resistance in my old man. Stall rest for now (which I’d have to do in any case with several days of off-and-on rain ahead of us, to save his foot wrappings). Pick up another set of pads and wrappings on Monday from the office with the expectation I’ll have to rewrap him at least once before his recheck. And of course, if he takes a turn for the worse, call the vet! My farrier’s been alerted and stands ready to do whatever corrective shoeing may be required.

I’m cautiously optimistic it’s mild enough and we’ve caught it soon enough to stave off any serious developments. I daresay if Kelly thought we were facing an immediately dire situation she wouldn’t have scheduled his recheck so far out. The stall rest is a double bummer, since he and Ben are so bonded that leaving Ben out in the run-in while Commander’s in the barn would throw the Morgan into a frenzy of inconsolable screaming, stall-spinning grief and terror, and he really doesn’t need to be stressed out like that right now. Ben would be upset, too. But Ben likes being in his stall, and the stalls themselves are huge and airy, so it’s not too bad for them. I just get to clean mass quantities of dirty stall bedding for the next week-plus, sigh. At least getting the medications into Commander is easy-peasy; this afternoon I mixed the powders along with his regular supplements into a scant cup of his senior feed and he inhaled the lot, then licked the bucket clean.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm............... It’s quarter of 10:00; time for me to run over to the barn for another dose of bute, a stall picking, and a refreshing of hay and water for the night. Guess I’ll save this draft, go see what’s what, and add an update before I ship it out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Woohooo!!! He looks MAHHHHHHHHVELOUS!

No, seriously, when I got there he was lying down, but got up for a (low-glycemic flaxseed) cookie and moved easily to come to me for it. I led him into an untenanted stall across the aisle so I could clean his mess – and he strode right out as if nothing was wrong! In that stall he walked around vigorously, checking it out; when returned to his own picked-out stall he stepped right out, pivoted on his front feet for halter removal without a trace of discomfort, and by golly! If I hadn’t seen him a few hours before I would never guess he was having a bout of laminitis. He scarfed down his evening’s bute dose in a handful of grain and a handful of moistened bran, leaving no trace of its passing.

It’s been about seven hours since his Banamine shot; six or so since his first dose of bute; while he does have drugs aboard, I have to think that this freedom of movement is a very good sign. Hopefully he will still be looking good in another 12 hours, when next I see him tomorrow morning.

I'm fine now! No, really! But...

2011-05-05T19:52:00.001-04:00

As I noted in my last posting (a copy of the letter I sent that day to the first responders), I was hauled off to the emergency room by ambulance on Saturday evening. Herewith I expand upon the event.

To be specific, it was a sudden attack of supraventricular tachycardia. As the EMTs and later the ER cardiologist explained it to me, the heart’s electrical impulses normally fire at the top of the organ. Sometimes they instead fire in the center, at the AV node, and that sends the heart into the fast-beat arrhythmia called tachycardia. What triggers it? Stress can (and I’d had a very stressful week); caffeine can (and I’d had a large mug of coffee within the last hour); it’s relatively benign, a problem with the heart’s electrical system rather than the plumbing, as the ER cardiologist put it. Sometimes it’s a recurrent problem; sometimes it hits once and never returns.

Which knowledge, had I known it when things went kablooie, probably wouldn’t have helped much with the “OMG I’m gonna die!” feeling that swept over me when this erupted. SVT produces a sudden sensation of pressure in the chest rising into the throat, a galloping, tumultuous pulse, with added delights of shortness of breath and lightheadedness – not to mention sheer terror: Is this a heart attack? Am I going to die? Right freakin NOW?

I’d had an episode much like this several years ago, that went away on its own after several minutes, so I tried a few minutes of sitting quietly, breathing slowly, and hoping. Didn’t help. So I called 911, reported sudden onset of elevated heart rate, and was told help was being dispatched right away. They weren’t kidding! As I waited I got dressed from housecoat to top, pants, shoes; fetched a jacket and my purse; stuffed a book (!) in my purse – and in those few short minutes help arrived. Quite an impressive show it was for the neighbors, too – not only the ambulance but also a fire engine and a police car.

The first responders were all wonderful – calm, professional, clearly knew their jobs and set about them with reassuring competence. After taking vitals, quizzing me on this, that and the other, and assessing the portable EKG readings, the EMTs rebooted my heart, and my blood pressure (from 200/100) and pulse began to drop back toward normal.

Rebooted my heart? Oh, yes. Hit the reset button, they did. Specifically, had me hold my breath and bear down in my gut while one EMT pressed hard on my belly – a technique which triggers the vagus nerve, they said, to reset the heart’s electrical system. Bonus: If I ever have another SVT episode, I can try rebooting myself!

Once they had me stabilized, they tucked me into a chair thingie, well strapped in, and carried me outside, down the stairs, and to the waiting stretcher. Kudos to their thoughtfulness in asking me what I wanted done with lights on/off, windows open/closed, and pet care, leaving me free to freak out over what was going on inside without having to spare any fretting for external worries.

Then it was off to the hospital – my first (and I hope last) ambulance ride, which is an experience in itself. They zipped me right into an exam room, no waiting room stays for cardiac patients I gather, and got me hooked up to various monitors, IV-portaled, and queried some more about what was going on. Blood pressure and pulse continued drifting downwards to reasonable levels; the EKG patterns steadied to normal, and after a couple of hours the ER cardiologist decided it was safe to let me go home: “Switch to decaf, take it easy, and see your doctor this coming week,” she advised.

I’ve been fine since then. Will be seeing my doctor tomorrow. Trying to take it easy (it helps that work is much slower this week than last). And switched to decaf.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update, Friday:

Saw my doctor today, and all systems were go; all signs were vitally fine; and I don’t need any further treatment at this point. My tachycardia, based on all the EMT and ER info, is indeed the much less likely to be lethal kind, and unless I start having frequent episodes we really don’t need to do anything. Then we can try Lopressor or some such drug.

Oh, and according to his scales, I’ve lost three pounds since I last saw him three weeks ago (for a discussion of arthritis beginning to twinge in my fingers, sigh). So I must be doing something right.

And now, off to make another cuppa decaf.

A Heartfelt "Thank You!"

2011-05-03T12:29:00.000-04:00

On this past Saturday evening I had a sudden and frightening attack of tachycardia and called 911 for help. Within scant minutes first responder help arrived – ambulance, police, and firefighters. They stabilized me, and off I went to Beverly Hospital.

Everyone who came to help me did their jobs with calm, reassuring competence and professionalism, and took care to see that no detail was overlooked – right down to making sure my wishes for lights on/off, windows open/closed, and pets were provided for, leaving me free to freak out over what was going on inside without having to spare any fretting for external worries.

As it turned out, the tachycardia was about as benign as such things can be (“You’re back to normal. Switch to decaf, take it easy, and see your doctor this week” said the ER cardiologist) and I was able to come home later that night, shaken but okay, and with a newfound appreciation for the first responders who serve my town.

I hope I never need to call on their services again, but if I do, I know that they will be there for me, be there fast, and be straight up great at taking care of whatever crisis has called them out.

So again I say: “Thank you! You guys rock!”

Mare Stare -- Ruminations on an Online Addiction

2011-04-17T18:48:00.001-04:00

The Internet is home to many communities; indeed it offers a near-boundless smorgasboard of virtual gathering places, from the minuscule to the immense, from the intensely private to the aggressively public; geared to narrow niches and sprawling diversities, to interests, quirks and passions of every sort the human mind can conceive of (and some it boggles the mind to contemplate).

One community I’ve become a part of is Mare Stare – more particularly, the message board called Mare Stare Cams Foaling Alerts and Updates. The service offered by Mare Stare seems simple enough: Host streaming cams to watch over expectant mares (and donkey jennets and goat does and sheep ewes and, well, there hasn’t been an elephant – yet), so that the owners of said pregnant critters can keep an eye on them even when they’re not in the barn. The MS motto is “Because you can’t be everywhere...” and the front page describes their mission thus:

Mare Stare is a family — a community of cam owners and viewers who help each other share the miracle of birth. The camera owners graciously put their foaling barns on line for the world to see. In exchange, they get the watchful eyes of viewers from all over the world, who will call them as soon as their mare goes into labor.

As a reward for their vigilance, the viewers get to see the birth live. Then, they get to watch the foal stand for the first time, take the first drink of life-giving milk from its mother, and run, play, and grow stronger day by day, as many owners share the progress and development of their foals with our community.

It's a family relationship that breeds friendship, trust and love among people from all over the world, even though they may have never met in person.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But the community that’s grown up around Mare Stare is as complex as any other human community, with its own mores, customs, lingo, and traditions. It’s determinedly positive, for one thing; even a hint of criticizing another person’s choices in breeding stock or foaling practices or animal care is simply Not Done. When a foaling looks to be going badly, one doesn’t say so outright; one simply offers prayers or jingles or wishes for a good outcome, or zips one’s virtual lips.

Joining that community was a bit of a culture shock. I came to it via another online community, one that prides itself on fiercely uncompromising bluntness, on argumentation over the tiniest of points, on clever snark and bristling confrontation; one that abhors smilies and sentimentalities, mocking them as abdication of articulate reasoning. A thread in the least serious forum there about one of the MS cam feeds sucked me in – horses! that’ll get me every time – and from there I found the MS message board.

Well! “Polar opposites” would barely begin to capture the chasm between my launching point and the place where I landed. I lurked for a while, absorbing the ethos of this new world, fascinated by the culture whose outlines and nuances I was sussing out. When I felt I’d figured things out well enough not to make a total idiot of myself, I joined (with a different identity, Janicket, than the persona known to the smartass board) and began to participate.

It was fun! It was rewarding – I made the alert-the-owner call that mattered a few times; once for a birth that would have gone badly had the owner not arrived in time. Did that make me feel good? You damn betcha! I mastered the art of the MS smilie palette; I saw births easy and hard; I saw foals that were up and exploring their new world quickly, others that struggled in their first hours of life.

And I saw death. I saw people fight heart-wrenching battles to save fragile foals. I saw people do everything in their power to preserve the tiny lives they’d hoped for, dreamed of, worked so hard to bring about, worked tirelessly to preserve, and were at the last powerless to save. I saw gut-wrenching struggles to save, if not the foal, at least the mare herself from the double tragedy of her death in fruitless labor. I saw the moment when hope was extinguished, when the life left the frail body, when mourners clung to each other over the shell of the vanished soul and wept in each other’s arms.

And it wasn’t all fun and games any more. It was, it is, quite literally, a community of life and death. I’ve been a part of this virtual world for about a year now, and while I never have and never will go through the birth of any animal of my own, I have come to appreciate just how stressful, how wearing on body and mind, how nail-bitingly suspenseful, how gloriously rewarding and horrifically devastating the process can be for all who go through it. The relentless insistence on positive interactions among MS members, I can see, is no mere Pollyanna pose; it’s vital to the wellbeing of the people who allow the world this glimpse into their lives.

I’ve been thinking about Mare Stare, its culture, its hold on me, for quite a while, puzzling out just why I have become so powerfully attached to the place. Then Sadie at Big Sky Farm went into labor. This is the thread that followed in realtime the unimaginable tragedy that unfolded: the hard-fought birth of a filly; the shocking, utterly unexpected stillbirth of her twin, a colt (horses don’t do twins! or, rather, very rarely they do; it’s even rarer for both or even one to survive); then the desperate struggle over the ensuing week to save little Athena, crippled in one hind leg by nerve damage but a gallant fighter, whose flicker of life dwindled despite all that could be done to nourish it. I was there, via cam, when the vet made the last merciful injection; I was there, watching, grieving, as her people embraced and wept over the filly’s body, as the cam went to black; though I’d felt from the outset that her chances were grim, still her death was a kick in the gut.

Why? Why did it hit so hard, why did it hurt so much? Why did I care? What’s it to me, that I should invest so much of myself into this event, this community, this pain?

The answer welled up, poured out into what I posted then in the thread and end this essay with:

Quote from: bigskyfarm on April 15, 2011, 06:08:50 pm
Kristen, the "person" of Sadie and Athena, asked that I post a heartfelt THANK YOU to all our wonderful friends here at MareStare. She appreciates your kind words and prayers during this long week.

We could do no less than offer our prayers, our heartfelt wishes for healing, and at the last our grief at your loss, for we have walked in your shoes; we have felt the wildly cresting waves of hope and despair sweep through us; we have ripped out a piece of our heart and sent it over the bridge with the beloved when hope was gone and only loss was left.

Whether it be a newborn foal or the faithful companion of many years; whether it be horse, dog, cat, donkey, or any other dear companion, I daresay there is no auntie on Mare Stare who has not looked into the abyss of sorrow confronting you now. My first horse, mine since he was 10, was crippled in a pasture accident at age 23. For a week we fought to save him, till he told us it was not to be, he could go on no longer; then I gave him the last gift that lay within my power, and released him to run free across the bridge. I had my heart’s companion for 13 incredible years; you had your darling Athena for only a week; yet I know you grieve as bitterly as I did, as I still do, for love is not measured in length of time together; love is, and the loss of the beloved cuts us all to the quick, cuts out a piece of us that departs with the departed and can never be filled.

We cling to, we cherish the memories, and when we see another suffer as we did, we suffer anew with them. And so it is that we here on Mare Stare followed Athena’s story so passionately, rode the swings of hope and despair as the days passed, and grieve now at her loss. Though we never knew her as you did, never knew the gift of caressing her beautiful face, of seeing the light of life and love in her soft eyes, still we mourn her passing, for it rekindles in us our own eternal pain, and we weep with you.

Ted's New Tower

2011-03-30T01:32:00.000-04:00

Ted has new digs, and he approves.

His three-level tower cage arrived a few days ago, and proved not too difficult to set up, despite the instructions being entirely in Chinese or Korean or some such inscrutable script. Fortunately the diagrams were sufficiently scrutable that, with a few false starts, I got the thing put together. Then I hauled Ted out of his original enclave, stuffed him in a carrier out of the way, disassembled what I had so tediously assembled a mere week or so ago, and reassembled a new cage complex.

I took the larger cage, turned it so the door end faced away from the tower, dropped the tower end inside that long cage (I tried to drop it outside, underneath the tower, but it wouldn’t fit), then tied the two cages together with shoelaces around rolled towels filling the spaces at the joint. The bottom-level tower doorway faces into the long cage, which is where the litterbox sits. The second-level doorway (door removed) faces out over the long cage. Atop the long cage I plopped a soft-sided portable kennel, an opened end butted against and secured to the tower. This provides a lair Ted can reach from the midlevel shelf of the tower, with sides and top that zip away so I can get in at Ted for petting and plucking out. Here, let me show you what I’m talking about:

Here’s the litterbox end of it all, with easy access for cleaning, much easier than the old complex. Given Ted’s unfortunate proclivity for aiming up and out when peeing, being able to fit the cover on is a Big Deal. The bottom tower door sticks out on the right because I wasn’t able to remove it.

The side view, showing the doorways into the long cage and the kennel lair:

Since the tower assembled in sections, I was able to put the top third on with the door facing outwards, giving me easy access down to the midlevel shelf where I put Ted’s food and water dishes. The opening’s high enough that he isn’t likely to make a sudden break for it when I open the door – not that he’s inclined to fight for his freedom anyway; he’s more interested in getting petted and fed.

Ted’s got a good view out over my deck to the thin strip of lawn that passes for a backyard, so he can amuse himself watching whatever passing squirrels and birds may make their appearance there or on the fence beyond. The cylinder thingie in the lower left corner of the tower is a useful stepping stone to the first elevated shelf, but he has no need of a similar aid to make it up to the top shelf.

That’s Ollie checking things out.

Another view of Ted’s dining room. The lair side facing the deck slider is a mesh, so he can lurk and surveill simultaneously.

I’ve stopped worrying that Ted will be unhappy in captivity. He seems contented, greets me with relaxed pleasure, doesn’t even try to get out when the door’s open, and in general appears to have decided that life is pretty darn good for him in there.

Finally! The Floodgates Open

2011-03-20T20:41:00.001-04:00

Ted has been refusing to use the litterbox ever since I put him into captivity over a day ago; to excrete at all, in fact. I was worried enough to be contemplating a vet visit Monday morning. Then I went out to do critter care at the farm an hour-plus ago and came back to find:

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!! He’d finally voided his bladder! And a mighty void it was, a veritable flood of pent-up pee. In the box, to boot.

Phew.

Ollie and, to a lesser extent, other of the young guys have taken to trying to walk on top of the cages, teetering on the wire mesh. So yesterday I put a multi-folded wool throw on top of the smaller cage and it instantly became a favored napping spot for various of the boys. Ollie still kept teeter-wire-walking. So just now I’ve laid folded throws on top of the larger cage. This appears to have met with universal approval. It’s interesting to see that at least one of the free males will hang out on top of the cage or in a napping spot nearby almost all the time now, so Ted has company.

When I took the photos below, Ted, still basking in my effusive praise for his pissing prowess, was purrfully playing with one of the catnip mice I drop into his cage from time to time; if he bats his toy too near the bars, alas, one of the outside pride will reach in, snag it, and steal it. It’s a never-ending battle to keep Ted supplied with amusements, but I don’t mind. Now that he’s used the litterbox and seems to be happy in there, I’m thinking this just might work for us all.

The latest in slammer amenities, being inspected by Pumpkin:

That round beige thing has a hole in the in-facing side and carpeting within, and Ted likes to crawl in and curl up there now and then. He’s big enough that he has to stick his head outside to fit, but this appears to be fine by him.

Outside looking in: Pumpkin and Peanut, and that black blob by Peanut is Schooner.

Update: Chillin' with the Tedster:

Ted Held Hostage -- Day Two

2011-03-20T12:29:00.000-04:00

We all survived the night, though not without some cost. After hauling from store to house, erecting, and setting up the two cages, getting the Tedster settled, and so on, I then spent several hours sitting in the recliner next to him, keeping him company while watching TV and doing some proofreading; then went to bed – and woke up, midsleep and this morning, with a wicked lumbar backache. I’ve hit it with ibuprofen and Ben-Gay, gently stretched the area in the course of the usual morning cleaning of eight litterboxes, and hope to do further limbering in an hour or so when it’s horse chore time. And definitely stay out of the recliner today! Sigh....

Ted seems fine, calm, mildly complaining now and then but otherwise unfazed. He ate breakfast with vigor, despite my having stirred into it a dissolved Wellbutrin dose. I stuck a yardstick through the bars of the big cage to rearrange the towels, since I can’t otherwise reach them without an ungainly contorted effort from the small cage end door, and he enjoyed a yardstick back scratch. The only thing that concerns me is his failure to use the litterbox yet. Didn’t use the towels, either, or spray outside the cage. He went into the slammer in late afternoon yesterday, so it’s not a full 24 hours yet. Hopefully breakfast will move him to void soon.

Not having a side door on the big cage is proving to be awkward. I may need to go ahead and get a two or three door large crate ASAP. There are such crates available at Petco in Topsfield. Only problem is, the Petco crate doors aren’t removable and they don’t open back flat against the cage side; I’d have to jigger a filler for the triangular space between crates when butting them together. So: added cost, added backbreaking labor of taking the current setup apart and installing a new crate. Ulp. The heck with it – for now.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Off to check on him

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Still no litterbox use, but I crawled halfway in through the small cage (draping myself over the [fortunately, in this case] still-unused litterbox), propped myself on one elbow, and reached the other arm into the large cage for some serious cat-skritching and stroking. Ted gobbled it up, purred, wallowed, reveled. Then I withdrew, cautiously – between the iffy back and the imminence of bashing tender body parts on cage wire, speed is not an option – and gave him a couple of catnip mice. He’s having a blast with them.

Still sucks for both of us, but I think he’ll be okay. Time will tell.

Ted's in the slammer -- and it's a life sentence

2011-03-19T21:15:00.001-04:00

Yes, unfortunately, Ted is now caged, and will have to stay caged for the foreseeable future, perhaps for the remainder of his life.

It’s that or put him down because he’s urinating all over the house. Territory marking, no doubt; stress at multiple males, perhaps; maybe simply the grumpiness of advancing age (he’s in his midteens). I never caught him at it, but I suspected him of house-pissing after Ed and Fred’s deaths. The episodes ended after a couple of weeks in each case; perhaps he thought he’d sufficiently marked his territory for the new world order?

Now, with Tomba’s departure and the arrival of Stan and Ollie, the house-marking has not only returned, it’s ratcheted way up. He’s hit my office especially hard, and I’ve actually caught him twice doing it behind my back – literally behind my back; I was working at my desk, heard THAT noise, smelled THAT smell, and turned to see him scram as I screeched. I’ve thrown out ruined stuff, scrubbed and pet-deodorizer-sprayed all the blasted surfaces I found by crawling about the room in the dark with a blacklight, have a steam rug cleaner with special pet-odor agent on order – and I just can’t trust him; within a day of the big all-but-steaming cleanup I caught him backing up to the wastebasket for another hit. He’s sprayed in the living room too; I suspect the upstairs bathroom (sniff – whiff?) but can’t find the exact place; who knows where else he’s gone I haven’t found yet, where he’d go next if I did nothing?

You ask, what about giving Stan and Ollie back to the shelter? And I reply, what if that doesn’t solve the problem? Once they begin this sort of pissing, they rarely reform. I could try kitty Wellbutrin, but (a) it didn’t do much for Tomba, and (b) Ted is a bear to pill. My office, to be blunt, intermittently stinks, and we’re not even into warm humid weather yet. I can’t work around, I can’t live with the stench and the constant vigilant mistrust of leaving Ted free to roam and piddle where he will.

Ted’s too old and too wary of strangers to try to rehome, even assuming anyone would want to adopt a known pisser. So it’s prison or death, alas, and I – judge, jury, executioner – have chosen the slammer for him.

I already had a small cage, the one I’ve used for housing cats on medical hiatus from freedom. After lying awake last night for hours pondering what to do, I went out today and bought a larger cage, the standard sort of large-dog-sized folding wire crate, and have tied the two cages together. Voila: Ted’s new prison. The white object above Ted is a rolled towel tied into place to block the gap between the larger and smaller cage openings.

On order is a six-foot-high, three-perch cat cage which I will tie into the other two cages. Since that has a door at all three levels, when it arrives and gets added to the current set-up I’m hoping to tie into the second-level door yet another crate I bought today, a cloth-sided dog den with a plush (removable) floor that I’ll put on top of whatever crate ties into the tower.

Oops! I might have to buy still another large wire crate to substitute for the one currently in use, because that one, what I was able to get on short notice today once I’d made up my mind, only has one door. (This crate, for example, has three doors, all removable, which would make tying cages together much easier, but I didn’t want to wait for the shipment to arrive to take action.) Would’ve been cheaper to euthanize Ted, eh? And no giant cage complex cluttering the living room!

But I just couldn’t do it. Maybe it’s selfish of me; maybe he’ll be so miserable caged that it would be kinder to call it quits. He’s already lived a good long happy life. But he’s handling the caging pretty well so far; complaining, yes, but after the first few minutes of looking for escape he seems to have settled down, and he’s eating, so he can’t be too freaked out.

So there it is: Ted’s a prisoner and I’m his warden. What a life.

Oh-oh -- I'm surrounded

2011-03-15T21:44:00.002-04:00

When the Ipswich Pride get hungry and want me to feed them, they start to gather about me. Quietly, one by one, they drift from their various snoozing spots to wherever I happen to be.

I’m working in my office. All seven of the senior felines have come in and disposed themselves about me.

They look hungry.

They’re eyeing me.

* cue theme from Jaws *

The ponies enjoy their winter

2011-02-24T11:11:00.000-05:00

Ben and Commander have been enjoying their winter, and why not? They’re fat, fuzzy, and exceedingly well-fed.

They haven’t had to work for months. All they have to do is hang out in their generous turnout, come inside once in a while if the weather’s vile, eat mass quantities of hay (plus a stingy ration of grain – treat time!) and dump the processed hay wherever they like, secure in the knowledge that the human who feeds them will also remove the result.

Being smart (and lazy), they tend not to wade out into the deep snow we’ve amassed over the last two months, unless the cruel human tosses their hay out there and their only hope of survival is to struggle through the wilderness to the life-saving food.

But mostly they spend their time hanging out in the run-in with their pals Cholla and Counterpoint.

Sometimes the boys play face-fight over the divider.

The game can get intense.

Eventually someone gets pissed off.

And the game is over. For now.

High winds; high as kite horses; high terror

2011-02-19T21:09:00.003-05:00

The adrenaline rush has worn off; the shakes are about gone; the heart rate is back to near-normal, here at home, safe, unharmed. But I’ve just gone through the scariest time in my horsekeeping life.

I’m back now from the barn, from bringing four horses in out of the run-in, into their stalls for the night. The wind’s blowing well over 20 mph, with gusts up to 40. All four geldings – my two; the farm owners’ two – were freaking out from the roar and rush and banging when I got there, even before I started leading them in one by one. At least the ground was bare, the ice all melted, or there’d have been a wreck for sure; at least floodlights illuminated the path we’d have to take; the distance from turnout to shelter was only a couple of dozen yards; but oh! what a vast and daunting distance it was, and worse with each traverse.

The first one out was Counterpoint, the Lipizzaner, herd king, likely to have a meltdown if others came in before him. He dithered at the gate but let me buckle his halter on, slithered through an opening brief enough to get him out without his companion Cholla jamming through on his heels, and snorted his way in, body bunched, head tossing, swinging sideways several times but yielding to my making him circle. Released in his stall, he rushed to the window to see what was happening with his herd.

That was the easy one.

Second: Ben, my normally quiet, laidback, biddable Thoroughbred, now strung out, wild-eyed, nostrils flared to fit a fist in, swinging between head-flinging bouncing whirls around me and brief bouts of frozen staring into the goblin-howling dark before his front feet left the ground again for another plunging eruption. There’s nothing like a half-ton of terrified Thoroughbred to focus the mind, eh? I managed to keep my deathgrip on the lead rope, tight to his head (let him get any slack and he’d have broken free or gone skyward), as we crabwised and spun our way up the drive, around the snowbank at the top, and into the barn. He stayed wired all the way down the aisle and into his stall.

Third: Cholla, the Quarter Horse. Usually in a four-horse take-in I’d leave him for last because he can handle it, but by now he was running and whinnying. I had to bark at him to hold still to get his halter on; almost got body-slammed going through the gate; and could barely hold him back from bolting up the drive, never mind I was spinning him every few steps, my elbow jammed into his shoulder to keep him from trampling over me. He dragged me down the aisle and was still quivering when I got his halter off and slid home the stall door.

Three down, three trips of barely contained terror, and only Commander left. Commander, the smallest of the four, but a Morgan has power to spare and he wasn’t sparing any. By now he was yelling and running and agitated almost out of his skin. When calm, he’ll shove his nose into an outstretched halter and walk quietly on a loose rope. Now? Head-flinging, dithering around the gate, barely holding still long enough to be haltered; slamming past me out the gate; fighting me all the way up the drive as wildly as Ben and Cholla. By the time I got him into his stall I was done for – arm and shoulder aching, hands shaking, legs weak.

I slid his door shut and went back out into the wind, to secure the gates from slamming and to set up breakfast hay in the run-in. Returning to the barn, I found all four had calmed down enough to dive into their hay, and to accept as their due the horse cookies I offered. I dragged the barn door shut, staggered against the gale to my car, and came home.

I should note here my undying gratitude to the persons who put basic ground manners on these horses. True, they were horrible to handle tonight; were on the edge of losing control; but they never went over that edge, despite their freaked-out craziness they listened just enough for me to get us all safely through the ordeal. Badly trained horses would have lost it completely and gotten us into a wreck. Whoever halter-trained the boys deserves credit for that.

Yes, I did have a cellphone in my pocket, and there was a person in the house had I needed to scream for help (he knows bupkis about horse-handling, but I’m sure could cope with ambulance-calling if need be). But it was something I never want to go through again.

Unless, of course, I have to. You do what you have to do.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update the following morning:

With time to digest the events of last night, to reflect on what happened and what could have happened, I’ve drawn some conclusions, learned some useful lessons, the most important of which is:

Don’t ever do that again. It was dangerous, foolhardy, and needn’t have been done in the first place, had I exercised reasonable forethought.

I was handling the farm owners’ two horses because they’re away on vacation, and another boarder, Donna, is sharing the horse care. She’d been there at 5:00 to do early supper and, had I thought to ask it of her, would happily have brought all four horses in then, in the light, when they were not as worked up as I found them.

But I didn’t think to ask. It wasn’t my only failure to think, either.

I didn’t think to double-check the forecast, to understand just how violent the winds had been and were then.

I didn’t think, when I headed to the barn, that the horses would be as frantic as they were; after all, I’ve brought them in before on windy nights and, while they’d bounced and snorted, they’d stayed sane. But I’d never done so when the gusts were as brutal, the wind-roar, the thrashing in the bushes and trees were so intense.

I didn’t think through just how hard and dangerous it would be trying to bring them in alone, with no horse-capable help at hand, in conditions where every step in the gale-battered semi-dark would spook them even more.

I didn’t think to give up my plans entirely, stuff mass quantities of hay deep in their run-in stalls, and leave them out for the night. It wouldn’t be comfortable for them, true, but they’d lasted out a day of gusty cold and could have made it through the remaining hours of darkness without much difficulty. No great harm would come to them, and we’d all have been a helluva lot safer. Not only did I risk getting seriously hurt by them, but if they’d broken free and bolted, they could have run into the road just dozens of yards from the barn; a road lightly travelled on a Saturday night, true, but the traffic that does fly by flies by at 50 mph or more.

I didn’t think. And that lack of thought put all of us at risk. It’s a failure I won’t repeat.

Tomba will have to go

2011-02-15T11:20:00.006-05:00

For months now, I’ve wrestled with whether to keep him. I like the guy, even though he isn’t effusively affectionate like Tanya. But he has never completely settled into the pack here. The hostility toward the other males, especially Schooner and Pumpkin, did ratchet way down after I started him on kitty Wellbutrin but never entirely left him. The screeching growling wailing charging furies still erupt now and then. It’s not just him and his target that are unhappy when he goes off on someone; all the other cats get more or less upset by it. Is such daily angst fair to them? Is it kind to Tomba himself to live with such daily stress?

And then there’s the pissing. Over the last few weeks I’ve found it three or four times on the stack of catfood cans in one corner of the kitchen countertops. Couldn’t be sure it was him; could have been Schooner, in fact, who is the only cat that gets up there when I’m fixing meals and so might consider that territory he needs to mark when he’s stressed about Tomba.

But this morning I caught Tomba backed up to a corner of the second-floor landing, letting loose a stream. And that was that.

So I’ve called and left a message for Matt, the animal control officer in charge of the shelter, and we’ll arrange a time for Tomba to go back. At least it’s a lovely, comfortable refuge, with a good-sized, well-furnished catroom rather than a cage awaiting him. Last time I visited, a couple of weeks ago, there were only two cats in the main room, so his odds of finding a new (one cat only please!) home quickly should be good.

Damn. I feel as if I’ve failed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update, February 16th:

Today Tomba went back to the shelter. He confirmed the decision by having a meltdown at Schooner shortly before we left. He had a lot to say, none of it good, about the car ride in the carrier, yet was oddly hesitant to leave its suddenly comforting confines when it came time to decant him in the catroom. Coaxed out, he scuttled belly-down to a hiding place, growled and hissed at the tortie who came over to investigate him (and who hissed and growled back; no further dramatics ensued), and by the time I left had settled into a sort of lair under a towel-draped chair with a catbed underneath, snug in a corner. Matt told me he has someone in mind for Tomba already, and given how handsome he is, I suspect he’ll be placed quickly.

So there I was, down to seven cats. And then as we were chatting Matt mentioned there were these two six-month-old orange boys, just been neutered, he’d be picking them up from the vet’s in a little while, he knows how much I like orange tiger boys, and................

No! NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I couldn’t possibly.....................

But of course I did. Damn that Matt! He knew I’d be a sucker for a new adoption on the heels of having to give back Tomba. So now I have two orange tiger boys sitting in a cage in my living room, getting over their surgery and getting used to the smells and sights and sounds of their new home, while the other cats, horrified yet resigned, alternate between cautious investigation and hanging out in a disgruntled pack on my bed upstairs.

Names, you ask? Well, given the difference in size, roundness, and stripe thickness, how about Laurel and Hardy? Or Stan and Ollie? Or how about Wire and Cable? Okay, maybe that last one is a bit much. Anyway, provisionally they are Laurel and Hardy, but we’ll see.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update, February 17th:

Everyone is glad that Tomba’s gone – even Tanya, it appears. She certainly doesn’t seem to be pining at all. The rest of the pride have been relaxed and happy, even with strangers in the living room, and I awoke in the wee hours to find a tangle of Schooner, Squash, Pumpkin and Peanut snoozing at my left side, their favorite night spot till Tomba uglied them away from me.

Stan and Ollie – provisionally, that’s where I am right now on naming them – are out of the cage and exploring the downstairs. They still haven’t vocalized – do they mew at all? I’m beginning to wonder. Definite differences in personality! As soon as the cage door swung open Stan was out and exploring – cautious but forward. Ollie hung back and refused to come out. Schooner slunk up to sniff; the two exchanged hisses from inches apart; then Schooner retreated and Ollie still sat in the doorway, dithering.

I went away to do stuff and came back some minutes later to find Ollie reconnoitering the living room while Stan did forward scouting through the kitchen into the dining area. Ted came downstairs and stalked over to Stan, there was an exchange of hisses, Stan backed away – and that was that. We’ve got workmen whacking away at roof ice outside and the noise scared Ted back upstairs. The newbies resumed exploring, with Schooner creeping about to monitor from varying safe distances. I picked up Ollie at one point and he enjoyed a little snuggle before asking to be put down. They’re both friendly guys.

They’ve been out now for over half an hour and so far – ah, there’s Schooner walking upstairs now, calmly. I haven’t heard a single yowl yet, and the pride in the bedroom seem not very worried about the strangers lurking below. No, they’re not hiding on the second floor; they always congregate after breakfast in the bedroom by the slider to the deck, to soak up the sunshine and snooze.

So far, so good.

Why I love winter horsekeeping

2011-02-01T10:23:00.004-05:00

Since I rough-board, meaning I pay for the horses’ housing but buy my own feed and do most of the work myself, winter is not fun. In exchange for the farm owner doing some of the work (hauling hay bales from the barn to the run-in, doing a couple of hay feedings per day to my boys) I daily refill the water trough that supplies my two and their two, a clawfooted bathtub which fortunately has a floating heater in it so at least I don’t have to smash ice out of it. But I do have to get the hundred-foot hose out of their basement, hook it up to the barn faucet, unreel it to the tub, fill, then drain, recoil, and return it to where it won’t freeze, over whatever the footing may be – and they’re not into putting salty sand down because of salt leaching into their ground. I pull ice cleats on over my boots and walk like a very old person.

There’s also the fun of trying to pitchfork up manure that’s partially or wholly frozen to the ground. Ground which offers an assortment of rock-hard bareness (yay I'm safe!), snow, either fresh to sink into (huff puff slog lurch) or packed (crunch crunch), and ice (creep creep omg please don't let me fall). Normally the horses are out all the time in their run-in, paddock and fields, but in weather like this they come inside the barn, in huge, airy stalls. Huge, airy stalls which I have to muck out. In their stalls, Commander produces about one wheelbarrow load per day of manure and wet/dirty shavings; Ben does more like two. If it’s cold enough they’ll get ice in their five-gallon water buckets that has to be broken out. I get hay bales from the overhead loft and equally heavy bags of shavings from the storage place in the basement floor of the bank barn (built into a slope so the back entrance is one floor lower than the front main entrance where my stalls are), heave them into my barn cart, haul them to where they’re needed, and heave them out.

Sounds like fun, huh? Normally I go there every day, at least once per day, to do the chores. But thank goodness I won’t have to for today and tomorrow. I’ve set up the hay and grain for the two storm days in advance and the farm owner will see to feeding them and giving them water. I did that pre-feeding work when I brought them in late last night, having set up the stalls (bedding, hay, clean buckets waiting to be filled) the day before. No way am I going to go out in this mess!

Why, yes. Yes, it is a lot of work. And I’m almost 62 and getting creaky here and there. No, I don’t know why I do it, especially when it’s 11:00 at night, I’m having to lead two mildly excited horses (“We’re going inside! Into our stalls! With lots of hay!”) through a gate without it swinging back into and spooking them, get them turned around and sorted out so Ben is on my left, the side his stall will be when we get into the barn aisle, trying to pirouette them around me while keeping the leads from getting tangled – and Ben accidentally flings his head WHAM into my face, into my lip, OUCH! and suddenly there’s the taste of blood, it hurts like blazes, I can feel the gore welling on the outer corner of my lower lip, and I can’t do anything about it (other than whimper and curse) because I have the lead rope of a mildly excited (but mannerly, they’re good boys and they don’t actually lose it) horse clutched in each hand and I have to get them up around and into the barn.

Which I do, sneaking in mitten-dabs at my battered lip here and there as we walk, get them into their stalls, and then I can check to discover that, yes, I am indeed bleeding. Fortunately I keep a roll of paper towels in the tack room. The paper towel wad I press to the wound gets big red blotches quickly. I still have to set up the grain and lay out two day’s worth of hay. I need both hands for much of that. Thank goodness I did the water buckets before going to get the horses! I layer a fresh paper towel wad over the injury, chomp down on one corner to hold it there, and get everything set up. By the time I’m done and can leave, the bleeding has slowed from “Omigosh do I need to go to the emergency room for stitches?” to “Eh, just miniblots now; I’ll just go home.” This morning it’s ugly but healing.

Winter horsekeeping is so much fun!

Goodbye, Sophie

2011-01-17T16:22:00.003-05:00

Sophie was given her release this afternoon.

On her last vet visit, in November, her weight was down to a bit over seven pounds; today she barely made it to five. Within her skin-and-bone frame Dr. Anderson palpated what felt like a mass in her abdomen. It wasn’t painful, but it confirmed the decision I've been coming to over the last couple of weeks.

And so my little old lady -- who always enjoyed visits to the vet (once out of the annoying carrier) because it meant attention! from people! and she loved attention! from people! – purring throughout, received a sedative, drifted into a doze, and lay quiet and light in my hands as the last injection slipped into her.

She was a good cat. Her life was long and happy. She went peacefully, with dignity, painfree, purring and unafraid.

It hurts like hell.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the aftermath of immediate grief for Sophie, as the first fierce wave of weeping ebbs, the words below of Emily Dickinson have crept into my mind, crept in and stayed with me, exquisite distillation of what I’m feeling now. “It’s only a cat,” one might say; “surely a loss too small for such powerful poetry?” But grief has its own logic; each new loss dredges up echoes of old losses, past pain reverberating in the present grief.

After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –

…………….

This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

Belly Fur Icicles

2011-01-15T19:34:00.003-05:00

Now, there’s a phrase you don’t run across in ordinary conversation, eh? But after the recent snowallop we took, it certainly applies to the doughty Morgan, who of course rolled vigorously in the soft fresh snow as soon as he was released from the barn where he’d sheltered from the storm into the field and run-in complex where he and his Thoroughbred buddy Ben live most of the time. Commander’s body heat, well stoked by all the hay he inhales, melted most of the resulting white crust off his woolly mammoth exterior, but the drips refroze and -- voila! mini-icicles:

I think they add a seasonally festive touch, don’t you?

Commander is thriving on a mere two cups of grain per day, perhaps because he gets massive amounts of good grass hay to keep him happy and healthily fermenting:

Every now and then he peeks over the run-in’s divider to check on his buddy Ben (“Does he have more hay than me? Does it look tastier? Maybe I could sneak in and steal some?”):

Ben is going commando this year – no blanketing at all, for the first time since I’ve owned him. Left uncompressed, his fine Thoroughbred coat has furred out almost as thick as Commander’s and he’s thriving. He doesn’t roll as much as Commander so in this photo he’s still wearing a dusting of shavings from his stall snoozes:

Of course, when it’s wet and stormy, or bitterly cold as it was last night, the boys get taken into their huge, well bedded and generously hayed stalls. Commander likes that as much as Ben, maybe more; in fact, when I was working on the run-in cleaning today, Commander went over to the exit and stood there, hoping I’d take him back inside. Sorry, little big guy; you’ll have to wait till Tuesday when the next storm rolls in.

Ben bullies Commander

2010-12-30T16:19:00.002-05:00

Ben was a greedy piggy bully to Commander at lunchtime today.

When the wind permits, I like to hay the boys outside of the run-in, and have two tubs and haybags set up behind it. Even when there's some wind, it's sheltered there; the ground is hard-packed stone dust so it's not muddy; and the boys tend to clean up every scrap rather than trampling some into the muck and wasting it, as they do inside the run-in.

Normally, they each take a position at their own bag-over-tub station and eat peaceably. But the recent blizzard left a huge sweeping drift curving along the base of the slope up to the run-in, and Ben found it a cinch to block off Commander's access to the inner hay. That drift on which Ben's tail is just resting is only hock-high at that point, but it rises up to chest-high on Commander within a couple of feet.

I was watching from a few dozen feet away, hoping Commander would swing wide into the snow where it was shallower and come up around to the inner feeder; the drift had already been broken through near the fenceline (Ben chasing Commander, perhaps?), so surely he'd follow that path?

Nope. He stood patiently watching the big bully chow down, just waiting. He's certainly smart enough to know how to get there; I guess he just wasn't hungry enough make the hard work of plowing through the snow worth the effort.

So I grabbed a piece of baling twine, looped it around his neck, and took Commander around to the path (okay, spaced-out holes) in the drift, unbaling-twined him, and slapped his ample rump. Off he went, breaking through to hay, glorious hay! I followed him to dry ground, knee-deep even lurching precariously from hole to hole. At least I didn't actually fall into the electric fence.

After a pat for my gobbling Morgan and a snuggle with Ben (not to mention a lecture on sharing which he of course completely ignored), I left them contentedly munching away. It's amusing to see Ben, always an underhorse in every herd I'd ever seen him in before, exercising his royal prerogatives now that he has the little Morgan to push around. For his part, Commander doesn't seem to mind his second banana status; and somehow, if there's any hay to be found, there's always some hay to be found in his mouth.

Warm cats for a cold December day

2010-12-09T14:24:00.002-05:00

Chilly day, chilly winds whipping by outside, but inside it’s snug and snuggly. Warmth is where you find it, and these critters warm my heart:

Squash and Peanut:

Ted, Peanut, Squash, Pumpkin:

Squash:

Tanya and Peanut:

Sophie

2010-12-09T14:16:00.002-05:00

My little old lady is getting very old; at least 16, if not older.

She’s also been getting thinner and frailer over the last several months. Oh, her spirits are still good, her fur is sleek and shiny, she eats -- though a bit more erratically; she goes about her daily routines -- though they’ve gradually constricted; and she’s able to get about the house and do what she wants -- though she can’t jump places she used to, and the other day while sitting she tried to roll back to wash her butt and fell over.

In short, I fear her time remaining is short. She had a yearly checkup a couple of months ago, which confirmed what my hands were already telling me about her weight. She was otherwise in good health. If she goes markedly downhill I will of course zip her right back to the vet, to see if anything can be done, but mostly I’m making sure she’s fed, comfortable, and loved, and making the most of what time we have left together.

Taken a few days ago, and – as is so often the case with my photographs of her – not nearly a true reflection of what a lovely little cat she is:

Schooner and Tomba -- sometimes it's okay

2010-12-09T14:09:00.001-05:00

Below, two photos I took yesterday morning of the combatants. As I said before, sometimes these two appear to get along just fine.

When things do get tense, though, it’s always initiated by Tomba. In fact, he’s been showing intermittent fearful hostility recently toward all the other male cats – even Pumpkin. Even humble, meek, rock-bottom-on-the-totem-pole Pumpkin! He has no problem with the girls, either his sister Tanya or my Sally and Sophie.

So, what’s up with that? Why, when he had apparently established himself as king of the household, does he now seem to see all the other male cats as a threat? I have to wonder whether Schooner tried to play with him (the doofus likes to play rough), accidentally hurt Tomba, and that caused Tommy Boy to lose his confidence that he was, in fact, the Big Man around here. So perhaps he’s regressed to that scarey stage of trying to figure out where in the pecking order he belongs.

The other boys seem bewildered and wary but not inclined to duke it out with Tomba for a higher position. Tomba himself may be marginally less wound up than he was a couple of days ago. May be. I just hope he gets himself sorted out soon. As king he would sometimes bully an underling but was a lot less intense about it.

Anyway, the photos. First, with the flash; then, with the flash not firing. As you can see, Tomba’s left eye is a bit squinchy still; it sometimes is completely open, sometimes is like this.

Now, if there were tension simmering between these two at this moment, I doubt we’d be seeing body language like this.

Trouble in Paradise?

2010-12-04T18:51:00.001-05:00

Hopefully this will all prove to be no big deal, but....................

Roughly a week and a half ago, Tomba went ballistic on Schooner, yowling and howling and growling and all “Bring it on!” Schooner, bless his dumb-bunny incorrigible curiosity, kept approaching the furious feline rather than doing what any sensible cat would do: flee and hide. Which of course just stoked Tomba’s rage even more. And of course all the other cats were freaking out at the brouhaha, which further ratcheted up the tension.

I was finally able to placate everyone by feeding them, and discovered that Tomba had a watery eye with a bloody tinge in the exudate. Since this was after midnight, I wasn’t feeling well, the bloody exudate didn’t resume after I carefully wiped the eye, and the nearest animal hospital open for emergencies at that time of night is a good half-hour’s drive away, I opted to wait for morning and see what was what.

What was what next morning was a squinchy but not wholly closed eye with both inner eyelids partially showing, and a bit of redness in the conjunctiva. So off to the vet we went, to the reassuring news that the eyeball was undamaged, the conjunctiva may have been nicked by a Schooner claw but nothing was seriously hurt, and a short course of an eye medicine I already had for both Tomba and Tanya* should set Tommy right. And so it has proved; Tomba’s eye is doing fine.

What aren’t doing fine are Tomba/Schooner relations. Oh, it’s not all war, all the time; most of the time, in fact, they seem to be perfectly amicable and will peaceably hang out or pass by within feet of each other; but since the initial episode there have been two or three more keening-fury eruptions from Tomba, as well as a handful of other lower-key cursing confrontations. Schooner doesn’t react with anger, he just partially bottles out with fear-fluffing, but damn his foolishness still tends to approach rather than run. What triggers it? Damned if I know.

So far Tomba hasn’t out-and-out attacked Schooner, other than short charges that break off just shy of actual engagement, and I’m hoping it never comes to that. But I gotta tell ya, it’s a bitch being yanked out of sleep by the wee-hours siren of an enraged cat. I’m hoping I can continue to placate them when things do blow up, and that Tomba will get over this with time, but what do I do if things escalate to full-on fights? The way my home is set up, I can’t keep them permanently separated, other than by caging one or the other. If it came to giving someone up, I have to say that I think Tomba would be quite content as an only cat, but I’d rather not go that route if at all possible.

* T&T have had off-and-on squinchy damp eye (her, right; him, left – the one Schooner apparently got) ever since they came from the shelter; the vet said it’s likely to be a herpes infection, perhaps shelter acquired, perhaps even picked up from one of my other cats, but very difficult to avoid in a multi-cat situation, not a serious problem, and easily controlled with eye med when it flares up and adding lysine to the diet to promote ocular health.

Thanksgiving Day, the Myopia Hunt, and yours truly

2010-11-27T22:02:00.003-05:00

Thanksgiving Day was a mixed bag for me; I’d been sick for a week with a low-level but persistent bug that left me headachey, fuzzy-minded and dragged-out-feeling. Never blew up into something horrid; never would go away and leave me alone. So although on Turkey Day itself I felt somewhat better, I chose not to inflict any lingering contagion on my brother and his family, and stayed home rather than driving to Melrose for the festive dinner. Don’t feel too sorry for me (I did a good job of that myself anyway); I had tasty takeout and a most excellent Zinfandel for my private feast, so there’s that, anyway.

One thing I did go out for (besides the obligatory horse care), despite my somewhat enfeebled state, was the annual Thanksgiving Day meet of the Myopia Hunt Club. It’s their traditional season-ender (though they do go on hunting for a week or two longer, weather and ground permitting), it’s a huge social occasion, and they welcome spectators, with or without camera. Despite living in Hamilton and Ipswich for the last fifteen years or so, I’d never gone to see it; but this year, what with being at loose ends and having a budding photography business, I figured, what the heck, why not? The meet was at Appleton Farms, a gorgeous and highly photogenic backdrop, only a few minutes’ drive from home and a place I’ve ridden through many times over the years.

I got there in plenty of time to see and photograph the riders arriving, eventually the hounds, and to capture (I hope) the feel of the event. I did not, unfortunately, capture the hunt leaping over any fences. It seems that the field of riders does a ceremonial loop around and over a coop and stone wall flanking a farm lane, in full view of the delighted spectators who line the fence to watch, before heading out to gallop over the countryside on the drag hunt proper. Another photographer told me which way they’d be coming, and I trudged out into the adjoining field to get the perfect angle on them coming toward me over the coop. Alas, they took it in the opposite direction! So I have some good galloping pictures, but............

Anyway, despite that disappointment, I had a great time, ran into some friends, handed out a number of business cards, didn’t freeze to death though I could have used one more layer – oh, and got some photos! And here they are.

Oh, yes, I did get more traditional sorts of rider, alone and in group shots, but here are three somewhat less orthodox samples:

From Pee to Periodontal: A Prisoner Swap

2010-11-18T23:34:00.004-05:00

Pumpkin has been liberated! He’s now back in population, and loving it. Oddly enough, he still loves me, too, unless he thinks I might be trying to capture him. While he still needs to stay on a special diet – a fresh can of worms now that he’s out, but one I’ll leave be for this missive – he’s otherwise in fine fettle indeed. I expect to have him snugged tight to my side when I go to bed tonight. The humble little roly-poly guy is a happy LRPG.

In his place as prisoner, alas, is Peanut. A distraught and horrified Peanut. A Peanut desperately trying to scratch, claw, climb, tunnel his way out of the cage.

And why is he in there? Because at a recent wellness check we found serious periodontal issues, requiring a future appointment for plaque excavation under sedation, and antibiotic followup at home. Trouble is, getting him to that vet visit entailed catching him at mealtime and stuffing him into the carrier despite fierce resistance. Whoever would have thought a massively obese 18-pound cat could writhe and twist and lunge so vigorously? He almost got away. Only a lucky seizing of random handfuls of blubber foiled his escape long enough for me to shove him into the carrier and force the lid down on his madly surging self. Peanut thrashed and protested all the way to the vet’s; huddled in horror during the examination; and yowled miserably all the way home.

Well. The poor little fat man was utterly traumatized by the whole thing (and who can blame him?); so much so that ever since he’s been wary of coming downstairs for mealtimes. He lurks till he’s sure I’ve left the area before scuttling down to forage for whatever the others have left uneaten. This is not all bad, since I daresay his caloric intake has dropped and he could stand to lose several pounds; but it means that getting him back to the vet’s for the dental work, and then administering a course of antibiotics at home, will be a bitch.

So the plan was formed: Once Pumpkin exited the cage, wait till the opportunity presented itself to get Peanut into the vacated confines, lock Peanut in, and voila! Being able to make an appointment with some confidence that I’d actually be able to show up with the cat? Check. Withholding food and water for ten hours before the procedure? Check. Being able to catch said cat for pilling afterwards? Check.

Accordingly, when Pumpkin won his release after a checkup this afternoon, I left the cage set up in the living room, complete with litter box, water dish, and towel bedding; left the side door open; and waited. About an hour ago Peanut entered the cage, sniffed about, and stepped into the litter box at the end away from the side door. Aha! I slithered from the adjacent recliner, swooped around to the side door, and quickly shut and latched it. Success!

Peanut went berserk. Pumpkin had fretted for a bit, then accepted his fate quietly. Not so Peanut! For the first fifteen minutes or so he frantically tried to fight his way out of captivity, radiating distress vibes that freaked out the other cats. The box got shoved all over the place; the towels got dug up and bunched; the water dish (of course) got tipped, spilled, and pawed into the towel snarl. Now, roughly an hour later, he’s settling somewhat; has stretches of several minutes where he’ll lie still on his towel pile and even lean into caresses through the bars; but is he resigned to his fate? Hell, no! As I write this, I hear intermittent bouts of scratching, bar-rattling and yowling wafting up from the living room.

I’m off now, to spend a couple of hours sitting with him, soothing and observing. I hope to be able to right his water dish and leave him with something to drink by the time I go to bed; to push a bit of food through the bars when he’s less crazed; and to find him calmer in the morning. And I hope like hell they can fit him in tomorrow for his damn teeth cleaning!

Update, the next day:

Alas! Just called the vet’s office to schedule Peanut’s periodontal reaming out. Today and Monday are booked solid; surgery (under which this falls since it involves anesthesia) isn’t done on Tuesdays; it looked as if the first opening would be after Thanksgiving! But I whined as piteously as the prisoner cat himself, and so Peanut is now scheduled for the procedure on the 24th. Happy Thanksgiving, little fat boy!

So will I...? Hell no! Let him out now and I’d never drag him back into captivity. He’s a lot calmer this morning, mostly sitting or lying and whining about how awful it all is, but his struggles to escape have become half-hearted. I was able to give him a breakfast bowlful through the side door without him bolting over me to freedom; to extract the poor tumbled-about water dish, clean and refill it, and return it to the cage; and to clean the box while he was stuffing his pathetic face. Maybe by the time he goes for the cleaning he’ll be sufficiently resigned to his cruel fate to endure the carrier ride and so forth with less angst.

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Interlude with camera

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And here he is!

As you can see, he’s been rearranging the furniture while I was writing this.

At least the scrabbling for escape isn’t as fiercely desperate and prolonged as it was last night.

One of Peanut’s preferred maneuvers has been the retreat: keep backing and backing and hope it ends well.

Lemme outta here!

Is that a pathetic Peanut or what?

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Update

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After Peanut's encounter with dentistry, he had to stay on a course of antibiotics for ten days, thus remaining a periodontal prisoner in the living room cage. Physically he did well; but mentally he seemed depressed. He was been eating and drinking, and processing his intake, in good health; but moralewise, I thought the boy could use a bit of a pick-me-up. So I got him a hanging scratching pad, complete with toy, and hung it in his cage. He seemed dubious at first, but the aroma of catnip infusing it, plus his native curiosity, lured him over to it soon enough:

Catnip aroma etc. also lured Squash to check it out. Seeing Squash play with his new toy goaded Peanut to get competitive. Pumpkin watched from a safe distance.

There was a bit of a tiff over toy rights.

Peanut, holding the superior position, won out.

Squash made do with the back of the pad (also enticingly surfaced and catnippy). And everyone was happy.

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Final update

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Peanut emerged from his prison stay mentally as well as physically healthy, and noticeably slimmer than when it began -- a good thing, given how grossly obese he'd been. He continues to be wary of capture at mealtimes, and slow to come to the feeding frenzy. That, combined with the all-wet-food, only-three-meals-per-day regimen the household is on now, has encouraged further weight loss. He's still too heavy (boy is he solid heavy!) but he no longer looks like a duffel bag with a golfball-sized cat head stuck on it. And as long as he doesn't think I'm going to grab him and stuff him into a carrier, he's snuggly and happy. So all's well that ends well.

Pumpkin Update

2010-11-17T00:20:00.001-05:00

The Prisoner of Pee is doing much better. He’s gone from many small piddlings to a few near-normal sized outflows per day. This progress has held even now that he’s off the medicine that relieved his discomfort. He gobbles each serving of S/D with quiet gusto.

The last couple of days he’s been feeling so good, he’s become playful. Yesterday I observed that he was restless, chirpy, and staring at a certain spot outside his cage, where a tattered fluffy mouse lay. He’d glance over at me, mew, and look back at the toy.

“Do you want that toy, Punkin?”

“Mmreep!”

“Here ya go, then.” (In through the bars)

Let the good times roll! Pumpkin batted it, tossed it, chomped it, disemboweled it, all the while keeping up a running chirpy commentary on how much FUN he was having. The battered batted mouse did, of course, end up in his water dish and had to be fished out by the human. Later I gave him a fuzzy ball to have a ball with. That one went for a swim too.

Currently there are two fuzzy ball toys in with him, which he plays with intermittently, and as I write this neither had wound up in the water dish today. He’s in good spirits, seems darn near normal, and will probably be released into the wild in another day or two, if he doesn’t backslide.

Pumpkin: Prisoner of Pee

2010-11-11T12:57:00.001-05:00

Alas, poor Pumpkin!

The sweet little guy is prone to urinary tract problems, thanks to a crystal-forming propensity. Dry food of course aggravates the likelihood, and with the need to keep food always available during the introduction into the household of Tomba and Tanya I’d gotten away from feeding mostly wet food. The predictable result: Pumpkin blocked up again.

I caught him straining in the box one morning, with minimal results, and promptly hustled him off to the vet. He came back after an overnight stay, subcu fluids, and extensive lab work with better functioning plumbing and no infection culturing out. That’s the good news.

The bad news was, he still wasn’t getting a free flow out, was still feeling frequent urges, and was surrendering to them wherever he happened to find himself – including on my recliner-settled lap. The poor little guy found himself swept away into lockup in the half-bath while I zipped out to Petco to buy a cage to confine him for his recuperation.

That was almost two weeks ago. He’s been back to the vet for a checkup and more fluids; is on a med to ease his urges (no, fellow human UTI sufferers, it doesn’t turn his pee orange, but it does give him comparable relief), and has settled more or less philosophically into his life as a prisoner. He’s still going too often, with low to significantly low output each time, but he’s much more comfortable than he was when this all began, and he IS getting urine out. We have him on a straight canned S/D diet to dissolve his crystals, which he’ll be on for a month; after that it’s recommended that he stay on C/D to maintain his urinary health. Not all cats find those foods palatable, but fortunately Pumpkin finds them scrumptious.

I call the vet’s office periodically to update them. If Pumpkin doesn’t improve the outflow in the next day or two, I’ll have him in for another round of subcu fluids, to flush him out.

In the meantime, the poor little guy endures. As do I. Having a cat caged with litterbox in one’s living room is not my idea of premium home decor, but it gives Pumpkin more mental stimulation than anywhere else, since he can look out the slider to the deck to watch whatever birds or squirrels happen to appear, and he has the company of other cats passing through or sacking out near him, sometimes pausing to sniff at him, his cage, or his food bowl (or to dabble a paw through the bars into the bowl, stealing what they can). I spend as many hours as possible in the living room to keep him company. And so life goes on.

What’s that you say? Why, yes. Yes, of course I have pictures. But you knew I would.

My Guilty Pleasure: Mantracker

2010-10-29T00:07:00.002-04:00

Oh, my. For years I’ve turned up my nose at reality TV shows. How could anyone ever waste their time on such silliness?

Well, now I know. Now I’m hooked. Now I’m a faithful devotee of the Canadian reality show:

Mantracker. (Warning: Has auto-play video but you can halt it)

And it all began so innocently. I recently upgraded from barebones basic cable to a wider range of FiOS channels, and among them found all sorts of good stuff on the Discovery collection of channels. Between Discovery Channel, Science Channel, and Animal Planet, there were lots of fascinating shows to watch, shows that I could tell myself were educational – yes, truly! There’s How It’s Made, How Do They Do It, instructive stuff like that.

There’s Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs -- definitely fun to watch, and also instructive, yes, they are too!

There’s Fatal Attractions – um, okay, so stories of how exotic pet owners get offed by their beloved critters IS a bit creepy....

Then of course, there are shows like Hoarders (on A&E) and Hoarding: Buried Alive – ah, well, yes, that’s kinda sicko voyeurism, I admit it; but hey! Every time I watch one of those shows, I clean out some clutter, so it can’t be all bad, right?

But then there’s Mantracker. There is no way I can defend that as educational, instructive, or in any way useful. But dammit, what a blast it is to watch! And I adore Terry Grant, the Mantracker himself. The Wikipedia article on the show has lots of information, if you, my Gentle Reader (assuming there's anyone out there), are inclined to learn more.

Well, yes. Yes, one does get to see magnificent scenic vistas amid the wilder areas of our friendly neighbor to the north. Also to see two guys on horseback hunt two people on foot through said scenic wonders. And no one eats bugs. So at least there’s that.

Ben's bonkericity: Not just his back

2010-09-19T17:33:00.002-04:00

Today I tested Ben's willingness to be ridden, now that he's had a massage to ease (hopefully) whatever was bothering his back. It was a perfect day for a test ride: warm and with light winds, rather than cool and stiffly breezy, so one could discount the weather as a factor. No strange horse between him and Commander; no Commander bustling off ahead away from him. I used the recommended pad to lift the pinch points of the saddle off him.

Ben was fine about being caught; fine about being groomed; fine about being saddled; fine about being mounted. We headed down the lane toward the culvert and the fields beyond the knoll.

Ben got to within a dozen feet of where the lane ran over the culvert and stopped. I pushed. He tried to turn away. I insisted. He began to yield.

And a long skein of motorcyclists went roaring and snorting and growling down the highway behind us. Ben turned to look, locked on, and stood rooted, all of his tiny mind focussed on the interruption, ignoring me. Drat!

When they'd finally passed and grumbled away out of sight and hearing, I swung Ben into the adjoining ring, got him moving at a brisk walk, and headed down the lane again. Again Ben tried to say "No" but I legged him on and he went ahead. I steered him out the same way we'd gone on our rodeo ride, around the back of the knoll, across the hayfield, through the gateway into the next field, and up toward the wooded ridge.

Ben was tense and apprehensive, looking for things to be worried about, stopping now and then and needing to be turned a bit to the side and strongly legged to get him moving forward again. Oh, no, he wasn't nearly as hyped as on our blowup ride, but leaving the barn was not something he wanted to do. He got happier when instead of heading down the Lane of Doom I turned him into the adjoining field and bent his course back more or less barnwards. I asked for circles and figure eights (all at a walk, for obvious reasons of Benly sanity, not to mention it was too warm to be doing anything faster on an out-of-shape fat boy whose winter coat has started to come in) and he settled down and listened to me.

We crossed into the next field homewards and zigzagged down its length. Ben was a Good Boy. When we got to the end of the field, where heading to the right would take us home, I steered him left. Ben's resistance to turning away from home and instead crossing over some dug-up ground where an irrigation pipe had recently been laid was minimal, barely one sucked-back half-step before marching on, so after a few dozen strides into the next field I thanked him and turned for home -- at last! Was that a sigh of relief I heard?

Ben was very lovey-dovey when we got back and I untacked him. Having his debridled face brushed with his very own special soft brush was so wonderful he snugged his nose into my chest and blissed out. He was so happy and relaxed, in fact, that when I hayed the boys he didn't even ugly Commander off the pile, merely came up on the other side to dig in.

So there you have it: Ben's barn-sour. He needs to be worked away from the barn, tactfully but firmly and steadily farther, till he gets over his worries about leaving his safety zone.

Ben gets pampered; Commander goes commando

2010-09-14T21:05:00.000-04:00

After Ben's freakout on Sunday, thanks in part to the comments of a friend, I began pondering whether his back might be bothering him. It shouldn't be, given how little work he's been doing for lo! these many months, and the ideal life of puttering about the fields he leads. Still, he does have kissing spines, which flare up painfully once in a while, and the last time he had the injections for that was well over a year ago. Plus, when I ran my fingers down his back near his spine yesterday, he flinched.

So today Ben got a visit from Lael, his massage therapist, who hasn't worked him over in almost a year -- after all, he wasn't being ridden much, so he didn't need the regular maintenance he used to get. And whaddaya know? He had knots of ouchy tenderness here and there about his body, primarily in the areas of his right wither and left croup. It certainly wasn't as bad as he's been in the past, but it was more than Lael expected from the life he leads.

We checked the fit of the Aussie saddle, on his bare back, with the usual saddle pad, and with the pad plus a contoured foam pad I used to use on him but hadn't lately. The saddle was snug with no pad and didn't rock, seemed to fit fine -- but wait. Under the left panel up in front, if one slid one's hand beneath it in the dip just behind the shoulder/wither, one could feel it pressing a bit too tight. Tight too, though not as much, on the right side. Put the cloth saddle pad on -- about the same. Add the foam pad, and it lifted the tight part just high enough to relieve most of the pressure.

Verdict: Saddle needs restuffing to fit the grazing-enlarged Ben. Till that can be done, he can be ridden as long as I use the foam pad.

Verdict on the Sunday explosion: He's been in greater discomfort than this before without blowing up, so the soreness isn't the whole story; but if he was upset for other reasons, then any nagging ouchiness would just move him that much closer to the edge of losing it.

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Meanwhile Commander has decided he wants to go naked -- no more shoes! He's pulled his left front shoe off, taking some hoof wall with it, three times in the last two-three weeks, the first time because he was mucking about in the bed of the creek that runs alongside his fields. That's been fenced off now, but still he's managed to remove that shoe from his increasingly chipped-away hoof. The third shoe expungement happened sometime between Saturday midday when I rode him and Sunday late morning when Rick was grooming him and discovered his oh-no-not again! bare foot. Since he seemed perfectly sound on it, and we were going to be riding entirely on grassy fields, we decided to go ahead -- and Commander was fine for the whole ride, not ouchy at all.

Which led me to wonder, well, instead of asking my poor farrier to reattach the shoe yet again (nailing into what? Is there anywhere in that hoof wall that's still solidly nailable?), maybe Commander could go shoeless? This is always a dicey question with a horse who's foundered in the past. Still, his single bout of founder was four or five years ago; he lives out on grass; what limited riding he gets is on the fields; and watching him move about with both shoes gone, he appeared be be quite comfortable, only taking one yikes! step when he put his newly bare right foot down on a stone.

So I talked it over with my farrier, the pros and cons, and we're going with no shoes for now. Ken will trim his feet tomorrow, to tidy them up, and we'll see how he does. I may put some Venice turpentine or other hoof toughener on his soles. Come winter he may well need to go back into front shoes (he does great with no hind shoes), but if we can give him at least a couple of months to grow out his hooves, perhaps he'll hang onto his shoes when they do go back on.

Sigh.............. It's always something with these critters, isn't it?

Ben Goes Bonkers. I Survive.

2010-09-12T15:41:00.000-04:00

And it all started so well....

Well. Actually, it didn't start entirely well. Commander's former owner, Rick, had come to the farm to go for a ride this morning, bringing along his girlfriend Carol and Carol's mare Lanny. While Carol tacked up and warmed up Lanny, Rick and I got the boys ready. We mounted up and headed out, with me on Ben leading, on a cool, cloudy, breezy day.

We weren't fifty yards from the barn when Ben refused to go forward over the culvert past the pond. We argued for a bit; then Rick went ahead on an eager Commander; Carol and Lanny fell in behind them; Ben and I brought up the rear.

We headed out past the knoll and across the hayfields beyond. Ben felt tense under me, an attitude not helped by Commander's tendency to break into a happy little trot up ahead, especially ascending a gentle slope to a tree-lined ridge. Ben's catchup trot included some nervous headshakes and -- dammit, was that a crowhop? I let Rick know we were edging into dubious territory, Ben-brainfry-wise, and he curbed Commander's enthusiasm to a walk. Ben trudged unhappily at the tail of our little procession, frequent snorts and an occasional headshake or neck snake betraying his unsettled state.

In retrospect, it's all my fault. I should have told Rick to steer Commander rightward, along an open field, instead of letting him ride the bold Morgan down a narrow lane walled by dense underbrush, with trees crowding in, pressing a leafy green ceiling down low upon us, dangling thin whippy branches in our way. Ben was tight with tension by now, but soldiering on obediently, until we had to slide leftward of a sapling half-fallen across the lane, brushing against it as we went by.

Ben was almost past the blockage when something -- a rebounding branch? A smell of deer/fox/coyote in the underbrush? An overwhelming blast of "I've had it I can't take it any more AAARGGGHHHHH"? -- lit his fuse and he exploded. In an instant he was bolting, plunging, fighting to get his head free and down for a fullout buck that would send me flying into the underbrush we were careening into the fringes of.

Yikes! Damn! I'm not quite sure how I stayed on, stayed with him, in the adrenaline-charged blur of the next few seconds. (It sure didn't hurt to be riding in my ultra-secure Australian stock saddle.) Somehow I got his head back up, his headlong flight stemmed, and enough of his panicked brain refocussed on me to halt him before he rammed through the bushes or crashed into Commander (we'd passed a horrified Carol and placid Lanny in a heartbeat).

Phew. Holy guacamole. When we'd all caught our breath Rick and Carol offered to call it a day on the ride, but by golly I wasn't about to let a near-death experience spoil our fun. We decided to put Ben in the lead, figuring his going last, with a strange horse between him and his best buddy Commander, was part of what was freaking him out. With some tactful urging my snorty high-headed Thoroughbred marched dubiously but obediently forward, out of the narrow Lane of Doom (which fortunately was opening up at that point anyway), and away to the fields beyond.

I don't mind telling you, for the rest of the ride I put the reins in my right hand and kept my left hand on the bucking strap that's clipped to the front of the saddle (which I hadn't had time to grab when the balloon went up). Often I spoke soothing and encouraging words to my still suspicious Thoroughbred. Where it was open enough to allow it, Rick brought Commander up beside Ben to offer buddy security. Ben continued feeling tense the farther away from the barn we got (and oh, yes, he knew exactly which direction it was, even in fields I'd never taken him through before) but he listened to me, he behaved, and bit by bit his tautness eased, his walk regained its swinging fluidity, and his head came down from Danger! High Alert! to its usual relaxed level-necked carriage. By the time we got back to the barn you'd never know to look at him that He'd Almost Died!!!

Well! That wasn't what I was expecting when we tacked up, that's for sure. Nevertheless, it was an enjoyable ride, and I've invited Rick and Carol to come back any time they like for another hack out -- hopefully minus the high drama.

Tanya snuggles; Tomba social-climbs

2010-08-30T10:13:00.002-04:00

Tanya's making more progress, I am happy to report. She's venturing farther and more often into her new world. She frequently visits me, or at least pokes her head around the doorframe to check on me when I'm at the computer or proofreading.

And last night was huge. Last night, sometime in the wee hours, I awoke to a feline leaping up on the foot of the bed and walking up to me. It was Tanya! A purring, snuggly Tanya who wanted loving, then nudged the edge of the covers as if....

Yup. She wanted under. I held up the edge and she slipped in and snugged herself against me for a few minutes before departing for her under-bed hangout.

Tanya's out on the landing as I type this; Squash is approaching from the litter boxes; there's some hissing and small growling; then Squash slips past her to go downstairs -- and she doesn't retreat to the bedroom. And here's a look at her, with Tomba being nonchalant in the background.

Meanwhile, Tomba is asserting dominance over the residents. Oh, not viciously, nobody's getting damaged. Most of the time he and the others get along as if they'd always lived together. But now and then he'll smack-talk and paw-smack one or another of the residents, just to let them know he's a big shot. No one seems inclined to argue the point.

Even Schooner, the endlessly intrusive and annoying, is allowed into the personal space of the mighty Tomba.

Even Schooner, the endlessly blithely oblivious, has enough sense not to push his luck and actually carry through on his dim stirrings of "Hmmmmm.... maybe he'd like to play with me?"

Tough Love for Tanya

2010-08-25T10:48:00.001-04:00

It's been a tough week for Tanya, but the end appears to be justifying the means.

A few days ago, I took the third floor away from her. Other than brief, infrequent forays from her top-floor retreat she wasn't making any progress toward integration. So I got her out from under her preferred bed, released her to flee to the basement, brought the two litterboxes down to the bit of hallway at the foot of the stairs (sigh), and closed the door.

Then a couple of hours later I went back up to investigate some odd noises and let Schooner out of there.

Poor girl! It must have been horrifying for her, losing her safest lair in this jungle of strange cats. For the first two days she fled from hiding place to hiding place, and had a haunted look when I saw her (usually to deposit a handful of kibble near her, then back off and watch to see that she ate -- a process often complicated by Schooner's eager intrusions). Daily I dithered over giving in and letting her have the third floor again.

The third day, though, showed some small signs of progress. She spent a larger amount of her hiding time camped under my bed -- a higher structure than her third-floor refuge, and much more exposed to the other cats. When they went near her, she didn't hiss or growl (or hardly any).

Over the last couple of days things have moved significantly forward. I've seen her several times actually out in the open! With the residents within a few feet! And nobody died! Last night I came out of my bedroom to find her sitting halfway down the stairs, Schooner at the bottom, and

OMG!!!!!!!!! She just looked into the office as I was typing this! Sat gazing at me for several seconds, and at Sally and Peanut beyond me, then turned and sedately walked back toward the bedroom!

Anyway, to resume what I'd been writing:

Tanya looked at me, let me come down a couple of stairs, then scurried away past Schooner for the basement. But that was much bolder than she'd been just two days before.

She still does retreat when I approach, but her slink is less craven -- more of a scuttle. I should note here that every time I've been able to touch her and pet her, she's responded with purrs and moving into the caress, so I think it's the frightening gestalt of her new existence rather than specific fear of me that moves her to retreat if I walk toward her. Crawling on my belly, I can get much closer.

She's back! Lasted a few seconds longer this time. Now she's under the bed, under the headboard, with Peanut lying under the foot of the bed. Both look relaxed.

To resume: Tanya's now tolerating the residents being within inches of her. Yesterday I fed her kibble under my bed. Tomba moved in for some; I gave him a separate pile. Schooner bustled in ("What's up? Food? For me!") and got his own little pile. Everyone ate quietly within a foot of each other. The last 24 hours have seen a real jump in her comfort level.

Hoo boy! Just went hands-and-kneeing partway into the bedroom. Tomba plunked himself before me for some loving. Tanya, three feet away under the bed, saw, meeped, considered, and started toward me. "Love me too" was in her eyes. She got to the edge of the bed.

Schooner thrust by me through the doorway, in between me and the retreating Tanya. Curses! Foiled again! Tomba continued soaking up scritches, till Schooner proved sufficiently annoying for him to thwack the impudent boy and chase him out. While those two were engaged elsewhere, Tanya and I communed. Hesitantly, she came closer... closer... her head emerged from under the bed... I reached out my hand and she dived into the chin and cheek scritches.

Schooner came back. Tanya turned away. I departed, elated with the amazing progress just achieved.

I have felt rotten over doing this to Tanya, but it's working out to be the right thing.

Tomba, meanwhile, is right at home. There's still a wee bit of posturing with the others now and then to establish social status, but he eats with the rest of the scrum, hangs out without fear, and has chosen the second-floor landing as his preferred observation post. When he wants some loving he stalks over to me and requests it. For Tomba, life is good.

For Tanya, I now can hope that it will also be good soon. Phew!

Sophie update: X-rays showed no bone involvement. Prescription: Tincture of time. Condition: Daily improving, to the point that this morning there's hardly any limp left.

T&T Update

2010-08-21T19:53:00.002-04:00

The news is mixed. Tomba continues to warm to me, and is doing well overall with the residents. Tanya is not making progress.

The big guy is spending more time outside the closet, though he still prefers to spend almost all of his time on the second floor. He will flee if I approach, but then stop and, often as not, come over to me for attention. Today I was able to clip his claws (which badly needed it). He was not happy about it but endured the process, then fled back into his closet hidey-corner when released. Later he resumed his sporadic coming over to me to be made much of. I've been able to lure him downstairs for breakfast (kibble scattered across floor) with the residents in the last few days, at least

Aha! Tomba just passed the doorway of the office where I'm sitting, coming down from the third floor (litterbox use probably) and headed onward to the first floor.

Anyway, he seems to be doing very well. There have been a few incidents where he and a resident have gotten up close and personal, leading to growls, low-whining yowls, and (on his part) some fast thwacking, but nobody's been harmed, and he will nose-sniff with others peaceably. No doubt he and the residents (notably Teddy and Peanut) are working out the status rankings.

Tanya continues to spend almost all of her time hiding under one bed on the top floor. She has created a nest in the stuff I stuffed under it and can slither into it, out of sight, but when I flop down onto my belly between the beds and talk to her, she'll creep out, meep at me, and hunch close enough to be petted. Purrs at me, too. I bring food to her twice a day, a handful of kibble in the morning and a small bowl of wet food in late afternoon. She has a water dish a short distance outside her refuge and the litterbox a few feet away. She looks quite healthy, her coat shines, her eyes are bright.

Today when she hunkered over toward me for petting I was able to extract her and clip her claws -- as badly in need of de-scimitaring as Tomba's, and a process she found even more distressing than he did. Still, other than trying to slither and squirm out of my grasp she endured it, and later in the day again crept near enough for scritching. But she will not come out from under the bed. It's impossible to say what she does when I'm sleeping or out of the house, whether she comes downstairs at all, but she does not seem to be trying to integrate into the household.

I'm torn. On the one hand, I'm tempted to move the litterboxes down from the third floor to the foot of the stairs, extract her from her refuge, and close the door to the top floor -- force her to deal with all that she's hiding from. On the other hand, it's only been what, two weeks? since she arrived, and perhaps she will make progress on her own if I don't push it. On the third hand, she's not moving forward; if anything, she's given ground in that she doesn't appear to be leaving the third floor at all lately, as she had done earlier in brief wary bursts.

It's unfortunately possible that she will never be able to deal with my multi-cat household, at least to the point of joining it. If so, is life as she's currently living it enough for her happiness? I do visit her several times a day. She seems to enjoy the attention (including belly rubs) but her face never makes it nearer to me than the edge of the bed. Is that enough?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tanya makes a fool of me:

Well! Right after postingt that update, I went looking for T&T. Found Tomba in the bedroom closet -- in the end opposite from his usual corner, just to confuse me.

So who was it who went slinking down from the third floor? Tanya! Tanya, whose spotted coat and white feet are very similar to Tomba's, especially seen at a quick glance as the feline glides swiftly by.

Currently the timid Tanya is hiding in a corner of the basement, under some shelving, a large wicker basket and a bundled-up tarp partially concealing her from the horrors of her strange new world. It's encouraging that she feels driven to venture out, however briefly, however limited her explorations.

Guess I'll hold off on blocking her acess to her top-floor refuge for a while.

T&T: One down, one to go

2010-08-16T01:19:00.002-04:00

Tomba's okay with the new life. Tanya still isn't.

Tanya's still hiding out, still growls softly if one of the residents comes too near. She flees if she thinks I'm too close. But I suspect if the residents weren't around she might be approaching me, because when I reach under the bed to her she allows her chin to be scratched, in fact she purrs and burrows into it. Tonight, when I laid my hand flat in front of her after some petting, she draped one large paw over it and rested her chin on that paw, purring, her eyes slitting shut. Even her flight slink is less craven.

Tomba's coming out of his closet lair to me now. This morning he emerged and sat among the residents, within feet of, say, Ted and Schooner, till I got out of bed, then retreated downstairs ahead of me at a sedate pace. I'll kneel or sit on the floor by the closet door and chirp. He looks, considers, and walks out. Twice today he's strolled out confidently and library-lioned beside me, wallowing in stroking and skritching. He let Schooner sniff his butt, and a bit later sniffed Schooner's butt. I'd say he's about 90 percent of the way to feeling right at home.

Just now, after his attention wallow, he stayed outside the closet, allowing me to go fetch my camera and set to work. And voila! Here he is. Isn't he handsome?

Ecce Tomba:

Update from Feline Central

2010-08-14T17:55:00.001-04:00

Sophie went to the vet this morning for a checkup, despite being marginally improved. She tolerated palpation and manipulation with very little protest; apparently whatever is making her limp and trail that hind leg isn't painful enough to elicit much of a reaction to direct touch. Verdict: Soft tissue injury; continue her confinement and limited movement for another 48 hours and see how it goes. So it's back to the office/hospital ward, with the accordion gate in the doorway when I'm in there, and the door shut when I'm not.

Sally is not pleased with this turn of events. Sally does not like being kept out of the office. Sally has tried burrowing under the obstacle. Since the barrier is merely propped in place, not fastened to the wall, this resulted in the clatter-bang toppling of the gate with her halfway under it. Exit Sally, pursued by a barrier.

Today Sally decided if you can't get under, go over. I'll go take a flying leap at it, she said to herself, and so she did.

You can see the ubiquitous Schooner in the background.

Sally's ensconced now on top of her beloved bookcase, triumphant.

Meanwhile, T&T continue adjusting to their new reality. Tanya shuttles between hiding under the recliner on the first floor and hiding in the closet on the second. But at least she's getting out and about. Tomba mostly hides too, but is bolder. Yesterday he came out to greet me when I sat down by the closet door, then headed for the stairs to the first floor, passing within a foot of Peanut, Teddy, and the ever-present Schooner on his way. Nobody offered threats of violence. Well, Peanut did dare to move in on Tomba for a sniffing and got a hissssss/thwackthwack for his impudent imprudence, but he could have gotten that from Teddy if the orange boy'd been feeling cantankerous.

There's still a goodly distance for both to travel before they're fully integrated into the household, but so far it's been remarkably smooth sailing.

Well, except for the furnace disassembly.

T&T Held Hostage: Day Eight -- Together At Last

2010-08-13T20:31:00.003-04:00

Tanya and Tomba are together now, crouched in the same hiding place, and it's all because of my hardhearted cruelty.

Tanya wasn't budging from her top-floor lair. Despite my best efforts to win her trust, woo her out, and in general get her to leave her under-bed lair, she stayed put. Let me pet her? Yes. Eat (at least some of) the food I brought her? Yes. Come all the way out from under? No. Other than quick dashes to the litterbox within feet of her refuge, or poking her head out far enough to drink water from the bowl between the beds, she wasn't going anywhere.

After a week of letting her mull over her new life, I decided it was time she made a move to come to better terms with it. So I stuffed pillows, bedspreads, and so forth under both beds, leaving her one end of one bed for a hidey-hole. This, as you may imagine, perturbed her. Tanya in fact fled downstairs in mid-stuff. She made it all the way to the basement, where she discovered to her horror that the behind-the-furnace retreat was blocked off. I caught her in mid-scuttle for the stairs back to the upper levels, petted her a bit, then released her. Scuttling resumed.

Since the cruel contraction of her former refuge, Tanya has experimented with various hiding places. I've spotted her several times lurking under the living room recliner, for example. At this point she's settled on joining Tomba in my bedroom closet -- a shallow but several-feet-wide lair with lots of hanging clothes to conceal her tubby body, and a pair of sliding doors I leave a few inches open at either side for easy access.

Tomba's done some exploring, and I've seen him in a corner of the living room under the same table where he found refuge after his extraction from under the plenum. Mostly, though, he hangs out in the bedroom closet. He and Tanya migrate between the two ends and the middle section; if one is in an end, the other is in the middle.

Tomba is more at ease with his new life, he's still not socializing with the residents but he's a lot calmer about things, and he will actually creep out of the closet to have at the food I bring him, even when one of the residents (hi, Schooner!) hangs about watching. He very much enjoys the head skritches, body rubs, and general making much of I give him, responding with robust purrs. Tanya is still torn on whether being petted by me is a good thing or not, but I can usually evoke a purr with concentrated chin-tickling. Both cats have absolutely refused to show any aggression to me, even when they're desperate to get away and I'm preventing it, blocking their way or (gasp!) even holding them briefly. They simply slink harder. Not that I often restrain them; mostly I just visit them in their hiding places and pet them at arm's length.

All in all, though, this is going much, much better than I'd expected.

Meanwhile, Sophie is on the disabled list. Late last night I noticed her limping badly, barely putting weight on her left hind. Careful gentle palpation evoked no protest or flinching, so I felt reassured that, whatever it was, at least nothing was broken. I did call the 24-hour emergency animal hospital in North Andover to run it by them, see if they thought I should bring her in (at 1:00-ish a.m., a good half-hour's drive away, sob) and after a thorough discussion of what was going on, we decided she could wait till this morning when my regular vets' office opened.

Meanwhile, so that Sophie wouldn't have to attempt navigating the stairs to relieve herself, I brought a couple of litterboxes back up to the living room where she was. Darn it! I'd just moved them out a day or two before, after catproofing the basement, and now.... back again. Sophie was glad of it, though; very soon after I laid down the tarp and settled the boxes on it, she clambered in and released a flood.

Called SRH Vet this morning; discussed what I'd observed last night and Sophie's marginally better ambulation this morning; decided to hold off bringing her in and instead confine her to a small space, since that's the treatment, I was told, she'd be prescribed anyway given the review of symptoms. Could be a wrench or sprain; could even be a dislocation; but tincture of time in such cases, aided by limits on motion, is the way to heal her. Also, their X-ray equipment, having just been upgraded, was refusing to function properly, so they wouldn't be able to look inside anyway. We've left it that I can call tomorrow if I want her seen and they'll fit us in. I'll see how she's doing tomorrow morning; if she's not clearly improving, off we go.

So now Sophie is here with me in my second-floor office. She has her own food and water dishes, her own litterbox, her own floor cushion on which she's sleeping as I type this, and one of those wooden accordion child-saver gates across the doorway. The other residents -- especially Sally, who claims the top of the office bookcase as her favored roost -- are annoyed that they can't get in, but have given up trying to burrow under the barrier.

Oh, and if all this weren't enough, my Morgan, Commander, has pulled off a front shoe and I had to swaddle his foot with vetwrap and duct tape to protect the hoof wall till my farrier can take care of it. What next? She asks plaintively.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update, a couple of hours later:

I should mention a bit of behavior by the fat little girl that is most encouraging: She's dipping and sipping.

Sophie for most of her life has had a habit of sitting at the water dish, dipping a paw daintily into the water, then lifting the paw to her mouth and licking the drips off it. She was doing that last night and is doing it again tonight.

I'm assuming that if she were in strong discomfort she wouldn't engage in that little idiosyncracy.

Watching her move from food dish to water dish to cushion just now, it appears that her limp is a wee bit less pronounced than it was even a few hours earlier. Still quite lame; still doesn't want to swing the leg well forward under her body; but a smidgen better.

T&T Held Hostage: Day Five

2010-08-10T21:14:00.005-04:00

I never knew a cat could purr and growl at the same time. And what an odd sound it is.

It's all Schooner's fault, of course.

Tanya and Tomba have become separated. Tanya's staying under the bed on the top floor, despite the heat that's built up there over the last few days. I keep the ceiling fan running on low, to stir into the still pall of atmosphere what little cool air-conditioning struggles up that far. Tomba is mostly hiding in my bedroom closet, lurking well-hidden behind the racks of clothing whose hems hang inches from the floor. I surprised him this morning on the stairs from the first floor; he was a step or two below the landing, startled to discover that I was out of bed and advancing toward him from the bedroom. He stared at me for a moment, then scuttled away downstairs. But the bedroom closet is his chosen lair.

Despite their continued insistence on hiding, both cats are warming toward me. I can reach in under the clothing to skritch Tomba, getting small head surges and purrs in return, and I do so several times each day. This evening I gave him a few minutes of a good body-scratching and stroking, and he very much enjoyed it. He will still flee if he thinks I'm hunting him, but he's purring strongly now when I caress him.

Tanya very nearly came out from under the bed this evening! I'd been spending time with her off and on all day, ten or fifteen minutes at a pop, just lying on the floor between the twin beds talking and kissing and chirruping to her, letting one hand slide in under the bed. She'd shift herself toward me, let me skritch her, then slither back.

This evening I lay there for a long time. We went through several rounds of advance and retreat. She began purring a few minutes into the session and continued rumbling at every distance. Once she hitched herself so far toward me that her face emerged from under the bed, as far as her eyes! Too daring; too soon; as I started to stroke her neck she backed away out of reach.

But she wanted my attention, that was clear. I lay quietly on my side, making small encouraging sounds, and otherwise not moving (darn near drifted off to sleep, in fact, despite the discomfort of my position). She scrunched closer. Got some head rubs. Inched closer, offering her side. I reached in as far as my awkward position would allow (the bed is too low to fit more than my arm under it) and rubbed her side, then her belly. Heaven! Nirvana! Yes YES YES!!! Belly rub! I withdrew my hand. Tanya mulled it over, still purring strongly. She swung herself toward me. I waited. She hitched a few inches toward me. I waited. She inched closer yet. I waited. She purred and purred and purred and....

A solid weight, concentrated in broad little paws, landed on my hip. Tanya looked that way. Her steady purr mutated into a rumbling low whine-edged growl. She shifted away from me as Schooner walked up along my body and plopped down into the narrow space between me and the bed. He stared under the bed at her. She stared back. He jumped up onto the bed in back of me, then meandered about over both beds, his sturdy body making the bedclothes rustle with his passage. She retreated farther into safety. The bizarre purr/growl, soft but clear, continued.

I told Schooner what I thought of his ill-timed arrival. He looked happy. Schooner believes that everyone loves him and is always pleased to have him around (hisses and swats bounce right off his cheerful confidence), and of course his human must naturally be delighted to see him! Go away? Why would I say that? So I gave it up for the night, content with the progress made.

A side note: The residents are getting along better now with each other than they did before T&T arrived. I guess there's nothing like an alien intruder to make a family pull together, eh?

T&T: Lurking unmolested

2010-08-08T23:13:00.002-04:00

The other cats, when the newbies slink down to the lower levels, look but don't touch. Tanya occasionally growls, very softly, if someone examines her too closely and she has no line of retreat, but that's about it for declarations of hostility. T&T spend most of their time under the beds on the top floor. Sometimes they venture to the lower levels. I've found one or the other huddling in my bedroom closet, well-concealed by hanging clothes, and been able to do some chin-scratching then. (They like it, yet still they scuttle away from me when I cease cornering them. Oh, well.) Tanya's also occasionally tried hiding under a bureau, or even behind the cluster of plants next to the second-floor slider. But mostly the third floor is theirs.

Unfortunately, that means that the residents have stopped using the litterboxes in the bathroom off the third-floor bedroom, formerly their preferred facilities, and now focus on the temporary setup in the living room. UGH! I've moved a couple of boxes down there and regularly clean them, but it is NOT PLEASANT. Tomorrow I'll be checking the behind-furnace holes, to see if the foam I sprayed in yesterday has filled them. I've also devised ways to block off the hidey-space behind there and other places where T&T could huddle beyond my reach. Tomba can have the under-shelf corner in the basement where he first hid, if he likes; but I'm not letting them have anywhere that's inaccessible.

Assuming I get the basement cat-hiding-proofed to my satisfaction, the litterboxes will be going down there tomorrow. None too soon!

Oh, yeh, also: Twice I've been able to get hold of Tanya and drag her passively resisting body into my lap for some loving. She does push her head into the skritching; she does purr at times; but she also wants to ooze free, and scurries away when I release her. That's all right; she'll come around eventually. The wary Tomba isn't ready for that much enforced affection yet.

T&T Held Hostage: Day Two

2010-08-07T11:30:00.005-04:00

They've made progress!

They've progressed from the first floor to the spare bedroom on the third/top floor of the townhouse.

At some point overnight (or early morning; I tend to get up at the crack of 9:00) both Tanya and Tomba made their way up two flights of stairs, past assorted agog observers, to new hiding places. I'd seen both cats making independent slinking forays around the first floor last night when I spent some hours in the living room, quietly reading and watching TV, occasionally talking and chirping to them, so I'm assuming that they independently explored upward till there was nowhere else to go.

Tanya is currently ensconced in a cat castle next to one of the twin beds:

There! Can you see a dappled hint of hide in there? Look closer:

Tomba is under one of the beds:

Tanya let me put my hand inside the cat castle to pet her. Yes, yes, I realize that putting your hand through a small opening into an enclosed space in which a scared (or at least worried) cat is hiding is just asking for it to come back shredded, but I'd observed how Tanya reacted to stranger touching while similarly tucked away at the shelter. She was fine then, and just now she actually enjoyed it enough to position her head for maximum chin-skritching. Did I even hear a hint of a purr? Tomba is less sure he wants anything to do with me and I'm not going to push him.

Just went upstairs to check. Tanya's now under the bed where Tomba had been and Tomba's under the other bed.

Schooner continues to be mightily curious about the newcomers, willing to get within inches before retreating. The others have an air of "What the hell is going on here?" to varying degrees but no one's outright distraught, everyone's eating, and it's been remarkably quiet overall. I'm really surprised, in fact, at how little craziness there's been. I guess my guys are accustomed by now to strangers showing up in their territory. It helps that T&T aren't the least bit aggressive.

Checked again. Now they're together under one bed. And so I leave them, and you, Dear Readers, for now.

No, really; what WAS I thinking?

2010-08-06T19:43:00.002-04:00

Tanya and Tomba are now upstairs, thanks to an hour of titanic effort by the animal control officer and my heating contractor.

They hadn't come out of hiding, that I could tell, all night. Their food was barely touched. Checking behind the furnace, I could just see Tanya, who retreated when I slithered into position to look closer.

Wait, what? Slithered into position? Titanic effort by...? Oh, yeh, if you've never seen how my furnace is set up, what I'm about to tell you wouldn't make much sense. So here's the deal: It's clear (and confirmed by my heating contractor) that the builder of my condo installed the furnaces in the complex, then poured the floors and built the walls to enclose them afterwards. Result? Insanely tight clearances all around.

Here's a look at what I mean: beyond the water heater is the furnace/central air, and a sheet metal plenum on the floor next to it leading back to a vertical plenum. At the rear of that floor plenum is a small space between the back of the furnace and the vertical plenum. Zig a zag into that little space and you find a narrow space between the vertical plenum and the basement wall. And that's where T&T had gone to hide.

Or so I thought.

I slithered in, as I say, on my belly atop the floor plenum, flashlight in one hand, and spotted Tanya, who retreated as far as she could into that zigzag space, but I was able to glom onto her and haul her out (snagging my shirt on various exposed nailheads in the studs) and plunk her into a waiting carrier, where she huddled, meeping softly. I went back in for Tomba.

He wasn't there. True, the back of the zigzag space was beyond the reach of my flailing hand, but it wasn't beyond the reach of the car-trunk-sized snow shovel I carefully probed the space with. No large blubbery cat retreated from the probe, not did I feel its edge nudge a large blubbery mass.

I searched the whole basement. No Tomba. I searched again. I probed again. No Tomba. Ack. Finally I called Animal Control and lucked out -- Matt was in, and promised to come over on his way home, in about half an hour. And so he did.

And he couldn't find Tomba either. We searched the whole condo. No Tomba. Matt even contorted and squeezed his six-foot-plus self into the zigzag space for a better look, but nope, not there. He was about to go get a Havahart trap from his van when I mentioned something I'd seen while I'd been slithered in: inside the tiny zigzag space, butted up to the floor plenum, was a rough hole in the concrete floor leading to a space under the plenum. A small hole, seemingly no larger than a large cat's head. "He couldn't possibly have fit in there, could he?" Heh. With the help of a mirror on a stick we found that, yes, indeed, he could fit in there. And had.

But Matt couldn't extract him. The hole was too small for a cat-holding hand.

Now what?

Now we take apart the floor plenum. Which means cutting the plastic pipe clamped to it. Yikes.

While Matt sawed away, I ran upstairs and called my heating contractor, Dave Wile. For a wonder, I got him. For an even greater wonder, at after 4:00 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, having heard why he was needed, he cheerfully agreed to come right over. And did so.

I stood back and let the pros have at it. In such cramped spaces it wasn't easy, and there were an amazing number of bolts that had to be undone. At one point, while Matt lifted the near end of the plenum a half-inch off the floor (as far as it then would go) I crouched on the concrete, peeked under the plenum's edge, and saw poor terrified Tomba staring back at me from what the poor fool had thought was a safe haven.

They never were able to get the thing entirely disassembled, but at last Matt thought he could get it high enough to reach under and extract the cat. He squeezed and contorted himself into the space till he was straddling the floor plenum, Dave lifted it as far as it would go, and......................

Voila! Extracted cat!

Matt carefully backed out of the space and handed Tomba off to me. I bundled the horrified blubbery mass into a carrier and took him upstairs to the living room, releasing him in the corner where Tanya was already hiding under a small table. He dithered a moment or two when I opened the top of the carrier, then flowed out and into safety.

Meanwhile, Matt and Dave were repairing the havoc wreaked in pursuit of the wretched fellow. I thanked them profusely, with words and in Matt's case with a 12-pack of Ipswich Ale; in Dave's case with a check for his ridiculously reasonable service call fee. In a trice the place was put back together, the rescuers were gone, and I was left with two gobsmacked adoptees hiding in a corner, seven resident felines recovering from the horror of strangers in the house, and the three litterboxes that used to be in the basement now resting on a tarp in the middle of my living room, to stay there until (a) I could get some spray foam to seal up the gap in the concrete floor, and (b) the adoptees adapted to life beyond the basement. Until then the basement is off-limits to the felines.

Oh, yeh -- I did get some photos. Not of the extraction process, though a video of that would be YouTube-worthy, but some shots of T&T huddled under the corner table. And here they are!

Here's Tomba. And here they are together. Another one of both. And a closer look at sweet Tanya's face.

What was I thinking?

2010-08-06T01:15:00.006-04:00

Why did I decide to adopt two more cats? Not even cute little kittens, oh, no; these are pudgy adults, 10 and 13 years old, in fact; surrendered to the local shelter when their elderly owner had to go to a nursing home, and needing to go together to whoever would be willing to adopt them. When I first met them on a visit to the shelter, they'd arrived just a couple of days before and were hunkered down, quietly terrified. On a subsequent visit, a couple of weeks later, they were amiable but not effusively friendly. All in all, despite their having lovely spotted shiny coats, they weren't going to be easy to place.

So after several nights of lying awake thinking about what a wrenching upheaval to their happy life they've been through, and how uncertain their future was, I offered to take them. Hey, I've only got seven now; two more would still keep me in single digits! Double digits is my tripwire, my STOP sign at the tipping point into crazy cat hoarder territory. What, you laugh? Hey, it works for me!

I don't like trying to integrate an adult cat into a household of adult cats; kittens are much easier. With adults there's a lot more sturm und drang, I've found. And yet....

On my second visit the two were in the front cat room with several other adults. Inquiry revealed they'd been nonconfrontational when introduced and in fact avoided any threat of hostility rather than threatening back, so I figured they weren't likely to get in fights with my resident felines, who in their turn, based on history, were unlikely to do more than swear and curse at them. So maybe, with patience, it could work?

The adoption coordinator for the shelter and the animal control officer both know me (I've adopted two kittens previously from the shelter) and when I asked about taking Tanya (altered female) and Tomba (altered male) they were quick to say yes. So this afternoon I took two empty carriers to the shelter and came back with two full ones.

Back home, I decanted them in the finished basement, where three of the litterboxes are. Tomba zipped right into a corner under a set of shelves with stuff in front of them, where he could hide, and stayed there. Tanya upon release has hidden, explored, hidden, explored; got as far as up the stairs and out on the first floor to the edge of the kitchen and living room before retreating.

Schooner, my youngest, soon came down to investigate. He was puffed up and wary but not actively hostile. I reassured him and he got a bit more confident. Tanya and he actually sniffed noses as she explored and he investigated; Tanya didn't focus on him and he was tentatively curious. If everyone will be as good about this as Schooner (but they won't be) this will be a piece of cake.

After hanging out for a while, talking softly and chirping, I went upstairs. Have let three of the resident cats sniff my stranger-scented fingers. They were wary but curious; no one hissed. And that is how their arrival went. Let us hope they will settle in without too much drama.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update, two hours later:

So far, so....... well, they're both still hiding in the basement, in separate spots. One or another of the residents goes down now and then to check them out, then comes back up, sedately. I don't hear any screams while they're down there. I did hear some hisses from Tomba a while ago, when I was sitting on the basement floor (carpeted, thank goodness) chirping and talking to T&T, and Peanut went close to Tomba's hiding place to check him out. Peanut retreated after a bit of cautious looking, and that was that.

I go down there every now and then to spend a little quiet talking time with them, come close enough to look at them, let them see me, then in a bit go away again. It seems best to let them come out when they feel comfortable with it. I'll probably put food and water down there for them until I see them regularly upstairs.

I liked their spotted coats but didn't realize till I looked over the health papers that came with them that they're both Ocicats! A breed I've admired for a long time, never thought I'd own as they are quite pricey! One website I looked at said $500 to $900 for a kitten. Although these two, with their white markings, are pet quality only, wouldn't qualify for showing. But who cares? I think they're lovely.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update, two hours later:

No problems, other than that the newbies have now taken up residence in the blind corner behind the furnace and refuse to come out. I've left canned and dry food and a bowl of water in the floor space between the furnace and the water heater, and closed the basement door so that the other cats can't get down there to steal their food. That was about an hour ago that I left the canned food (tuna), and so far they haven't touched it. I did check with a flashlight and spotted a bit of Tomba staring back at me from his crouch beside the furnace. Hopefully by morning they will have at least eaten something. Seems to me, since they don't come out when they hear me coming down the stairs (or go back and hide, I don't know) that I should not bother them again tonight. I'm leaving the lights on down there so they can see where they're going if they do come out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update, four-plus hours later:

Some small amount of dry food, and maybe a bit of tuna, had been eaten on last check. Around 11:00 I went down and sat in the basement reading for about an hour. After a while, Tanya emerged from a different hiding place and slunk back to the furnace. Tomba didn't appear. They will have the basement to themselves for the rest of the night. Tomorrow I'll open the door and leave it open for several hours, and see what happens.

I do hope they'll get over their fear soon and move upstairs; it's not much of a life, hiding behind a furnace.

Huzzah! The Greenheads Are Gone!

2010-07-31T19:36:00.003-04:00

Hurrah! At last, the greenheads have run their vicious bloodsucking course! Since they appear to have died off now, I've been able to leave Ben and Commander out during the day, yay! But alas, there are still plenty of other flying pests to annoy them, and yesterday when I walked into their paddock, Commander saw me and came charging in from the field, circling tight around me and trying frantically to rub his head on his human: "Get these mosquitos offa me!"

I took pity on the boys and put them in the barn while I cleaned the run-in and refilled the water tub, then put them back out for the night. Before turning them out, I gave each one a good grooming -- Commander loved it so much, he even stopped eating hay while I worked on him -- and flyspraying. That Morgan's a right smart fellow; he normally gets put out first, and he'll zip directly into Ben's side of the run-in to gobble as much as he can of Ben's hay before the big guy gets there and turfs him out.

They do love their run-in. Why shavings in a run-in, you ask? Because Commander took to treating it like a regular stall, peeing as well as pooping, and, well, it just was unbearably gross without putting down shavings to absorb the mess.

They have access to their far field, but spend most of their grazing time on the near field, even though it's eaten down to lawns and roughs by now; it's closer to the run-in, to shelter from flying biting annoyances.

Ben, poor sensitive fellow, hates the bugs, and if I try to drag him out of the run-in to the field (with a loop of baling twine around his neck) he'll often race back in as soon as he's released. Same same with Commander. But they do get out and graze, more now than during the past few weeks of greenhead grief, and it's a treat to see their shiny bay coats illuminated by the late low light:

Memories of a stray cat

2010-07-28T12:23:00.000-04:00

A long time ago, I rescued a stray cat that was living -- no, existing; it wasn't much of a life -- in a small fenced-off space at the end of the alley in Boston where I then had an apartment. It took several days of feeding, inching closer each day as the little thing grew in her trust of me, till I could snatch her up, stuff her into a carrier, and bring her to my vet.

She was filthy. She was half-starved. Her long fur was so matted she had to be shaved over most of her body. Worse yet, she'd broken one hind leg above the hock some time ago and it had healed up bent outward, so that she walked on the inside edge of the paw. My vet almost cried when he saw that; he said if he'd gotten her right away he could have fixed it, but by now it was too late.

Well! That wee Piglet (so named for her enthusiastic appetite) could get around just fine on that crippled leg, could run like blazes on it in fact, and she settled in with me and my other cats quite happily. Her body filled out; her fur grew back in to a rich soft brown tabby and white; and she proved to be an affectionate, gentle cat. We were all so happy.........

Until, after several months, things started to go downhill. Piglet began losing weight, despite continuing to eat voraciously. Her energy diminished. She began spending long stretches of time lying by the water dish, alternately drinking and just resting her head on its edge.

A visit to the vet confirmed my fears: Piglet was ill. Specifically, she was diabetic. We discussed whether to try her on insulin; but my vet's considered opinion was that euthanasia was the kindest option. And so I said a sad goodbye to my little rescue. It grieved me, yes; but it comforted me to know that I had plucked her from misery and given her a happy life for its last few months

Gentle Giants

2010-07-05T12:44:00.002-04:00

"Gentle giants" -- that's a term commonly applied to draft horses. They are massive, true, though some breeds are no taller than many riding horses; but the largest among them are awesome, almost overpowering in their physical presence when you are close to them and can measure your own puny insignificance against their immense height and girth, their unimaginable strength. If they wished to, they could crush you like a bug.

And yet they don't. Though draft horses, like any other equine, can rebel against their human handlers, or panic and bolt (as a team did in Iowa during a July 4th parade, with tragic results), mostly they bear patiently with the small two-legs that buzz about them, commanding their obedience and ordering their lives.

It is fortunate for humanity that they are so biddable, and not just in terms of safe handling. For most of recorded history draft horses have pulled the plows and wagons of agriculture and transport, skidded logs out of the forest, hauled ore from the mineheads, mowed fields for the hay that fed them through the winter, dragged graders down dirt roads, and in multitudes of ways powered the human milieu that selectively bred them to their massive greatness.

Today, of course, draft horses are irrelevant to the functioning of society. The internal combustion engine put paid to their usefulness in almost every sphere. There are those who still use them for logging; folks like the Amish still use them for agriculture; but by and large, their day as the motive force for civilization is done.

Most people, if they think of them at all, think of the Budweiser Clydesdales. Though the best known of promotional hitches, they're not the only ones. I've seen up close and personal the Hallamore Hitch, a team of eight Clydesdales who pull a gigantic antique wagon at fairs, expositions and parades across the Northeast. I've stood in the stands at the Topsfield Fair, mere feet from the team as they trotted past, harness jingling, wagon wheels rumbling, feathers at their fetlocks floating, and felt the floor beneath me shudder with the seismic power of their thundering hooves.

It's at agricultural fairs and farm shows that you'll also find an old amusement of rural America still alive and thriving: horsepulling -- where a team of horses is hitched to a given weight and must pull it a given distance. It's uncommonly exciting:

The contest is run one of two ways: using a dynamometer, a machine used to measure horsepower, or with weights on a stone boat or sled. A horse pull is an elimination contest, with successful teams moving on to the next round until there are only two teams left. The winner of the last round is declared champion.

Horses must stay within the boundary lines drawn in the dirt or will be disqualified from the round. Hookers are assistants whose job it is to hook the horses to the sled or the dynamometer. Once they have done this they are required to stand back and not speak to the horses or drivers. It is against the rules to slap the horses with the lines or strike them in any way.

If you've never watched a horse pull you owe yourself the experience. To witness the power of these 2000-pound animals strain against the harness and pull thousands of pounds of dead weight twenty-seven and a half feet (the official distance) is an amazing sight.

Outside of such venues, though, one doesn't often see the gentle giants of the draft world. But there's a farm near where I live that boards horses, and last fall I had the privilege of photographing two massive buddies in their field.

The gelding is a Belgian, one of the more popular draft breeds; a friend of mine, in fact, for many years had a Belgian which she used for trail riding. I saw him standing out in the field, enjoying the mild autumn day.

With him was a mare, almost as large as her large protector.

What was the mare's breeding? Her mane and forelock were as long as a Friesian's but she did not look like a purebred.

They eyed me for a while, perhaps wondering what I wanted and what it might mean for them. Finally they decided to come investigate -- or rather, the gelding did, and his friend followed.

All the while I was observing them the mare, shy and wary, kept the gelding between us. Or perhaps it was the Belgian who made sure to stay between his companion and any possible threat.

Was she curious? Yes. Willing to approach the stranger? No. But still.... curious.

The Belgian clealry was most tenderly attached to his lady, and made frequent small gestures of affection.

I do not know, will never know, the mare's history; but at some point in her life, she was no more than a number to the human(s) who owned her and branded her number 35.

Whatever her past, her present was easy, comfortable, and happy. The eyes that watched me cautiously held no terror of the human, only a shy hesitancy.

Are draft horses' heads big and boxy? Yes; they're a far cry from the delicate elegance of, say, the Arabian. But they have their own majestic beauty.

And their eyes are as lovely as any equine's, anywhere.

Commander Updates

2010-06-21T21:33:00.003-04:00

Update from June 16:

He's doing quite well. The wound is filling in nicely, and today we graduated from being wrapped to unwrapped, just spritzed with that silvery aluminum stuff. I'm to cold-hose it and re-spritz it every day, call the vet to update in a couple of days, and turn him out pretty much as usual starting tomorrow. He's still on Uniprim, will be for another few days.

Commander's had a lot of stall rest and limited turnout, which he has tolerated pretty well. He has had a couple of releases into his field, a liberation which was greeted with mighty bucks and gleeful galloping. Despite the hijinks, he managed to get the bandage displaced only once during the course of his treatment. But then, it was a very good job, done daily at first, then every other day:

Another view:

The one time he did dislodge it, the top half worked down below his hock but went no farther, and I was able to cut it off with him standing loose in the field, grazing busily while I carefully snipped it free.

Ben has been content with barn confinement to keep Commander company. As long as he has hay he's happy. He's equally happy to hang out with Commander when they're out, nudging him to go wherever Ben thinks they ought to be. In the field, the two are usually grazing within a few feet of each other.

Update from today, June 21:

Things are inching toward resolution. Over the weekend I became concerned since the wound site, while no longer open or weeping, became puffed out. The skin edges looked fine; the uncovered flesh was a healthy pink; but over the course of three or four days since the bandage's removal, the area slowly grew from slightly raised to undersized-walnut size. Okay, more like pecan-sized. Bigger, anyway.

No exudate appeared. The area was firm, and except for one day, Saturday, when he picked up that leg a few times, Commander didn't react when I palpated around and on the enlarged area. Even firm pushes were ignored. He was also unfazed by my hosing followed by towelling off the area before applying the wound spray.

Consulted the vet on Sunday. We decided it might well be excessive granulation rather than continued infection. Since Commander finished his last dose of Uniprim on Saturday, we've chosen to leave well enough alone for now. Continue cold hosing, continue applying the aluminum spray, and watch the area. If there's still an infection lurking within, it will announce itself shortly.

So far, so good. Today the area was no larger. Might even have been a wee bit smaller, or perhaps that's simply wishful thinking. Still firm, clean, and not the least bit tender to touch. The wound edge looks healthy and the open area might could be a smidgen nearer to closing. Commander throughout has been totally sound on that leg, so I think we can discard any lingering worries about the infection getting into the hock joint.

And now -- pony pix! From the 15th, when he still had his bandage on. It's amazing, how they can find anything to graze upon in their thoroughly eaten-down paddock, but when the field is closed off, they do.

Behold the noble Morgan, in all his graceful majesty!

Commander decides to meet the new vet

2010-06-09T22:57:00.001-04:00

Well, I'm sure he didn't consciously set out to garner an introduction to Kelly Butterworth, the newest member of SRH Veterinary's practice, but meet her he did this evening.

A couple of days ago, I spotted a small wound on the inside of Commander's right thigh, about an inch long vertically and maybe a third of an inch at its widest, about four or five inches above the hock. It had bled but stopped by the time I found it. I cleaned it, Betadined it, and spritzed it with that silvery wound spray. The boy was completely sound and unfazed by having it touched, so I figured, all right, skin scraped by a hoof kicking at flies, no biggie. He continued perfectly sound and un-ouchy, nothing dramatic, wound looking like healing okay.

But today, when I groomed him to ride, the wound was open and outpouching at the top, and oozing a bit of watery pus. Oh-oh. He moved with no trace of a limp, so I went ahead with the ride -- a short one; he and I both decided the mosquitos were too annoying to stay out long. Being ridden didn't bother him, nor did being palpated around it, but the look of the wound bothered me, so I called the vet. That was midday, and the veterinary dance card was, as one might expect, quite full, so after finishing my chores I went home to await The Call.

Commander finally was seen around 7:30 this evening, and sure enough, he needed that medical attention; Kelly diagnosed a puncture wound. The darned things can look utterly innocent and superficial, they seal over and all looks well; then infection burrows in and blows out. And so it was with Commander. So the boy got a bit of chemical calmer; Kelly cleaned, debrided, and irrigated the wound; and we finished the evening's entertainment with a leg wrap, a jar of Uniprim antibiotic to start feeding him, a recommendation to keep him stalled at least overnight, and another visit by Kelly scheduled for tomorrow, to check his soundness, treat the wound again, and decide where we go from here. He'll probably need to have it irrigated for several days. Since I can't rely on anyone at the farm to help me every day, and there's no way I'm going to try to irrigate a hind-leg wound in an unsedated horse by myself, I'll probably have to have Kelly come back and do it for me till she pronounces it healed well enough not to need further irrigation. Sigh..........

As it happens, I'd already intended to bring Ben and Commander in overnight and keep them in next morning, since it's forecast to rain, be chilly, and continue so through much of tomorrow. Commander would have been fine staying out were it not for his injury, since he has sense enough to come in out of the rain and lurk in the run-in; but Ben, dear sweet not-so-bright Ben will stand out in the pouring rain and cold till he's soaked to the skin and shivering miserably. And if Ben goes in, Commander has to go with him, or great lamentation and brouhaha will ensue.

Commander gobbled the mini-mash I made for his first dose of Uniprim; I should have no trouble getting it all into him. If he has to be stalled for a few days, Ben will probably have to stay in also, since they are so bonded -- okay, co-dependent -- and if I put Ben out Commander will likely pitch a fit at being left behind. Given how merciless the mosquitos have become lately, and how much Ben likes being inside, a few days' restriction to his capacious stall won't unduly oppress him. Commander will be less content with confinement, but as long as he has his buddy Ben across the aisle from him, he'll be okay. They have, and will have, plenty of hay to keep them occupied.

Oh, one other note: Kelly Butterworth has just recently joined the SRH Vet practice. She's a native of the area, and in her teenage years was a barn rat at Seven Acres when I first boarded my late, great QH Nick there. Nicky the Pickle -- she remembered him! With great fondness. She sort of remembered me too -- as the owner of Nick; that was my claim to fame. Yes, indeed, the Magnificent Pickle made a lasting impression on all who knew him. Especially the barn rats.

I Have Drapes!

2010-06-02T21:06:00.001-04:00

When I moved into my condo, must be over a dozen years ago, the previous owners left behind at my request the drapes for the slider to the little deck off the master bedroom. They were a heavy plain off-white material, hauled open and shut with a pull cord at one side. They didn't thrill me, but neither did they bother me enough to replace. They built up cat hair over time, and took on a somewhat dingy aura, but year after year, they served their purpose: Open. Close. Open. Close.

Until one day, a couple of months ago, when I tugged on the pull cord and that end of the rod pulled right out of the wall. Unrepairably so; I had to take the entire thing down. Can't say I was sorry to bundle the whole tired mess into the trash; but now what? Can't have that expanse of glass uncurtained, not when it faces east, into the rising sun (oh, the horror for a night-owl late riser!), and with a clear view-shot from Linebrook Road into my bedroom.

So I researched drapery online -- fabrics, styles, and local purveyors of such; and found a fabric that I liked very much on the website of Calico Corners, which has a local outpost in North Beverly. There followed in rapid succession a visit to the shop for an in-hand view of the fabric, a retreat home with a swatch to plunk down here and there about my bedroom, a return to pick out backing cloth and hardware and place a provisional order, a home visit by the installer to measure, and a finalizing of the order.

And then: the wait for the drapes to be made. Six to eight weeks, I was told; and it turned out to be about seven. But at last they came in; at last the installer came out to hang them yesterday; and I HAVE DRAPES! And I love them.

In fact, they are even more gorgeous, even more JUST RIGHT for my bedroom than I had hoped. Here, take a look and see what I mean:

The walls are a pale peachy-gold sponged onto a developer-vanilla base. I wanted the Southwestern color palette to go with the decor, but not a pattern per se, just the suggestion. Here, take a closer look:

Such a variety of ways there are to make drapes! I wound up going for the simple pinch pleat, which I think works well with the subtle design of the fabric:

Picking the hardware was another excursion into a multitude of choices, but when I saw the finial for what became my choice, I knew I had a winner:

The installer did a meticulous job, in the process hiding the broken wallboard where the old rod had pulled loose. The drapes are lighter-weight than what they replace and slide easily. Open or closed, they just look so fine!

Over time they will, of course, acquire cat hair and dust and the familiarity that breeds, not contempt, but unmindful taking for granted. But for now, for the moment, I HAVE DRAPES and they delight me.

I ride on Crane's Beach!

2010-03-29T11:27:00.002-04:00

Yes! On Sunday I rode my Morgan Commander on Crane's Beach, Ipswich.

Yes, it was as chilly and blustery as it looks, and it was around 6:00 p.m. (low tide was 5:30), so the daylight was fading. But the beach closes to horses on April 1st, and there's a mighty storm rolling up the coast, arriving today and planning to sit over New England and drench us for the next three days, so this was my one shot at it, thanks to a kind acquaintance.

Here is Cherie on her Morgan Mica:

I left my good cameras at home and took along a little point and shoot, so the image quality ain't so hot, but still we got some good ones, passing the camera back and forth.

This one's my favorite:

That's an Australian stock saddle I'm in; as out of riding shape as I am, I was taking no chances. Commander was on fire! He's been to the beach many times with his previous owner and he knew just where he was when we unloaded. He was good about being mounted, and followed Mica politely, but you could tell he was pumped to be there.

Going out he walked politely, and jogged easily when I asked (I didn't ask much since he's as out of shape as I am), but when we turned to go back, well, I had myself a little jigging machine under me. And yet, it was no big problem. He'd jigjogjigjog to catch up to Mica -- who is a much bigger walker than Commander and would pull ahead; I'd check him back to a walk; he'd walk, slowly fall behind, and jigjogjigjog up again. If I'd merely hinted at it, he'd have broken into a canter (I know his previous owner would gallop him sometimes on the way back) but he obeyed when I refused to go along with the idea.

He's such a blast to ride. Cherie's going to take poor trailerless me this summer to ride with her in the local state park, Bradley Palmer, and back to the beach next fall. Woo-hooooo!

Commander gets jealous

2010-03-18T20:55:00.002-04:00

Jealous of Ben, that is. Jealous of Ben being ridden, and he himself not.

Which is amusing, since Commander has a lazy streak and will cheerfully suck out of a diligent effort if you let him get away with it. But then, once he determines you aren't taking "nuh-uh" for an answer, he'll work as hard as you ask him to, and not complain. So I suspect the tests of his rider's intent are more a game for him than a real disinclination to earn his easy keep.

But jealousy, how did he reveal that side of his increasingly intriguing personality? Because Ben's pet teenager, Rebecca, has come to visit the boys over the last two days. She's groomed them both and fussed over them both, but only ridden Ben each time.

And Commander has not been pleased. After all, hadn't he joined Ben in greeting Rebecca enthusiastically? Hadn't he revelled in her industrious grooming of the mud crusted on his coat, in her scrubbing away at the itchy fur he's shedding? Why, then, oh, why wouldn't she ride him too? He could see Ben being tacked up, right in front of him, since Rebecca did that outside in the run-in; he could see them working in the ring next to the run-in; he was right there when Rebecca brought the big lug back and untacked him and made a fuss over him.

Why did she then ignore him? Why wasn't it his turn then? It wasn't fair!

No, really, Rebecca told me that both days, after she was done with Ben, Commander stood right at the gate, facing out, waiting for his turn to go to work. It couldn't have been plainer what he was thinking if he'd been wearing a neon sign flashing "What about me?!?" Today I got to the barn just as Rebecca was leaving, and I can attest that Commander was still waiting with muted indignation. I grabbed his bridle, a saddle pad, a helmet, and the crop (I never have to use it but it's an effective visual aid with this guy), trotted down to the paddock, and sure enough, there stood Commander at the gate, still waiting to take his due turn at serving the humans. Unlike previous times when I've come to ride him, this time he stood still for bridling instead of pulling his initial slow-motion duck-away. I swear, he seemed relieved that someone, finally, was going to do right by him.

He stood politely while I flicked the saddle pad over his back and hopped aboard from the mounting rock (I'm getting better at it; getting into the neighborhood of graceful, even). We had an enjoyable little putter around the ring and he moved right out, the most forward he's been since I started barebacking him over the last few weeks. Maybe he was determined to show the world (or at least any handy human) that he deserves every bit as much attention as Ben.

This jealousy thing could be quite useful, I suspect.

This guy is a hoot, and gets hootier every day.

Euthanasia

2010-03-12T11:38:00.004-05:00

I've had to euthanize several cats, and while it's always heartbreaking, in every case I knew it was the right decision, at the right time, which made it somewhat easier to bear.

The worst euthanasia decision I ever had to make was for my horse Nick. He was 23 years old and still in excellent health; his age was just beginning to show. He was spending the summer at a friend's farm in New Hampshire, and I'd been up to see him earlier and enjoyed what proved to be our last ride together. I'd planned to bring him home at the end of August, but Anne suggested leaving him with her for another couple of weeks to enjoy grazing relatively fly-free now that summer was over.

A few days before Nick was to be trailered home, I got one of those calls that kick you in the gut: "Nick's been hurt. Hurt bad. You need to get up here fast." A frantic two hours' drive later, I saw my horse: scraped and bruised from his struggle to regain his feet after somehow sliding under the electric wire down a small slope and getting cast on his back in a shallow swale. (We never figured out how it happened; perhaps it was a small stroke?) But that was superficial and not of concern.

What froze my heart was Nick's loss of sensation in his hind legs. He could move them, clumsily, but he couldn't feel them -- he'd lost all proprioception beyond his croup. He could walk, but with each step he swayed terrifyingly close to falling.

Anne's vet did what she could. We decided to see if he would heal, and when I left at last I clung to some shreds of hope through the leaden misery of replaying again and again in my mind what I'd seen.

For the next few days I kept in close touch with Anne. One night came another frantic call: "Nick's down in his stall and he can't get up. I'm getting help. Be ready to come up. Be ready to decide." That evening we almost made the decision. I waited by the phone, unable to leave immediately, knotted up in helpless worry. But Anne's neighbors came over and her vet joined the fight to get him back up; Nick tried, rested, tried again; the human crew who refused to give up on him inched this 1,000-pound animal over to the outside door of the stall, got his front legs out, pushed and heaved him farther, farther -- and Nick slid out, got up on all fours, and tottered off looking for grass. Anne phoned me, exhausted, triumphant, with the good news, and to report that her neighbors had joined the big red goofball's fan club.

But the joy from that rescue was fleeting. A couple of days later I drove up to meet Anne's vet at her farm to discuss what next. I walked down to where Nick was hanging out under the bank barn with Anne's two horses, the vet by his side. And I knew.

He was glad to see me and he gobbled the doughnut and horse cookies I'd brought him and he wanted his belly scratched (oh, how he loved having his belly scratched! He'd follow you around the paddock slinging his flank at you, demanding more) but he was weaker, I could see that, since the Sunday before when I'd last seen him. He was tired, tired of fighting to go on, and so wobbly he almost fell just moving into position to get his belly scratched.

The vet was so kind. Donna told me she'd seen a much younger horse with the same injury who'd never recovered and that I was right to let him go. She showed me the place on his spine where she believed the injury was. We started to lead him -- just with a rope around his neck, Nick was always such a good guy -- we were taking him up the slight slope to where I'd chosen to bury him if it came to that. He tried to follow me but halfway up he lost his balance backwards and sagged down. He folded rather than slamming down, lay on his side with his feet higher, picked up his head and tried, started to try to get up. I knelt by his head and comforted him and told him he didn't have to try any more and told him I loved him and he laid his head back down and trusted me and I stroked his face while the vet gave him the needle and he went so softly so gently he never even drew the harsh agonal last breath. Just... gone.

Anne was at work, distraught because I think she knew what I would decide when I saw Nick. I called her when I made the decision and again afterwards. Donna comforted me as best she could, stayed with me for quite a while afterwards talking and helping me deal with it. We covered his body with a dropcloth and I cut off keepsake strands of his mane and tail. After Donna left I stood leaning on the fence for a while, staring at Nick's body, and cried. Finally I got his tack into the car and drove to Concord where Anne was working and we cried on each other for a bit. And then I drove home.

That was in September 2005. I'm crying now, reliving it. He's buried in Anne's front field. I have a picture of him happily grazing on the spot that became his grave. I look at it every day.

Anne and Nick, two months before his death:

Filth!

2010-03-12T00:25:00.006-05:00

Filth.

Wallowing in filth.

Wallowing in filth till its foul glutinous slime encrusts every inch of the wallower.

Filth.

In other words, it's mud season, and the horses are making the most of it.

Ben isn't quite so bad as Commander, but only because he's still in a winter blanket, so he has to make do with layering the muck onto his periphery.

Still, he does his best to get down and dirty. It takes some serious wallowing to get his inner ear hair all crusty with dried mud, after all.

But the ear hair isn't Ben's proudest achievement in muckification. Oh, no. No, I'd say it's the gigantic globs of mud crusted in his coat and tangled in his mane that truly impress (or horrify, depending on whether one had any foolish hope of grooming him). Like this:

You've got to admit, that's some serious filth there, eh? And yet, if you holler and screech about what an unholy mess he is, and how the devil can I ever get you clean, he looks back at you with such uncomprehending innocence:

That string of mire beads in his forelock is a nice touch, wouldn't you say?

And then there's Commander. Commander, the hardy little Morgan whose thick coat needs no blanketing.

Whose long, thick, fuzzy coat is one hideous mass of dried, semi-dried, and still glutinous MUD.

True, he hasn't daubed and smeared his head as thoroughly as Ben, but then, I've never seen another horse as impassioned as Ben is about grinding his head into the dirt whenever he rolls.

Whew, that near side of Commander is truly gross and disgusting, isn't it? Perhaps his off side might be....

Um, no. No, it's just as bad, with an extra heaping serving of muck right where the saddle would sit if one could excavate far enough down to find his back.

So, I'd say Ben gets the concentrated filth prize, but Commander wins the overall muckification honors.

Commander gets wise to me

2010-02-22T19:38:00.001-05:00

Today was another soft warm day, so I decided to ride the little guy again. This time when I entered the run-in paddock, bridle in hand, Commander looked at me, looked at the bridle, and made a slow-motion escape attempt. Ha! He's figured me out. Since he had nowhere to go (the run-in paddock being rather small, and the fields beyond being shut off as too muddy to let the boys out onto), his half-hearted rebellion fizzled out fast, and he resigned himself to his dreadful fate.

I got him to stand on a lower patch of ground next to the mounting rock this time, so the boarding process was somewhat closer to graceful than the last time. We did a bit of ringputter, then I dared to take him out into the wilderness. Yes! Out into the great beyond!

We headed out from the ring, out along the farm lane, out across the culvert, out past the knoll to the rise of ground on its far side. By golly, I believe we travelled as far as 60, maybe even 80 yards away! Commander was dubious about this mad venture into the unknown, what with the narrowing of the lane over the culvert, the water puddled along it, and the evil-looking grubby swathes of snow flanking our path, but when I refused to accept any sucking back he bravely went on. In fact, by the time we turned around he seemed relaxed and even intrigued by the new stuff to look at. I'll give him his due: He didn't try to rush when we headed homeward into safe familiarity, just pattered along on a loose rein at his usual rate.

Commander's a bit of a lazy boy, and would rather not work, if you don't mind; but if you do mind, he says okay then, I'll do it, and does it. I love Ben dearly, but he's a lot more work, needs a saddle, needs a warmup, and needs effort to ride his big elastic gaits. Commander's a no frills, no effort quick spin. If you've only got a few minutes to spare for some riding fun, he's perfect for it.

He's also polite about taking his Meadow Mints from your hand afterwards.

Today I rode Commander

2010-02-20T19:31:00.002-05:00

Yes! Today I rode my fiery Morgan -- well, my fresh, not-worked-for-months Morgan -- okay, my laidback, yeh-whatever Morgan. It was a mild soft day (for February, anyway), so I figured, what the heck, just pop on his bridle and hop on bareback.

Yup, bareback on a horse that hadn't been worked for at least a couple of months. Bareback by a mostly sedentary over-60 rider whose primary exercise comes from mucking and wheelbarrow pushing. Who hasn't been on a horse for at least a couple of months, and hadn't done all that much riding for ages before then.

This is, shall we say, not exactly the smartest move one could make, eh? Indeed, my knees were a bit weak as I got going on my folly.

Commander wasn't thrilled to be taken away from his hay but he submitted to being bridled with patient good humor. He led quietly to the mounting rock, stood quietly next to it as I slung my leg over his broad back, and stayed quietly still as I lunge-leaped the few inches required to heave my body far enough across said broad back to get aboard. He actually waited till I was more or less centered and upright, in fact, before moving off at a sedate walk. I tell ya, if he'd wanted to dump me he'd have had no trouble; if the rock had been an inch or two lower, or his back an inch or two higher, I'd never have made it, and I am very glad there was no one there to point and laugh during the mounting scramble.

So, off we went, me grinning with silly triumph, Commander no doubt wondering what he'd done to deserve this. We ambled up around the barn to say hello to Noah, farm-son (Maria, farm-wife, was out for the day; Peter, farm-husband, as it turned out was inside and watching with bemusement) and to let him know that he need no longer be alert for any screams for help or dull thud followed by appearance of riderless horse. Then we ambled down to the ring and puttered about for several minutes.

We trotted! Okay, we jogged. Short distances. Commander has the most wonderful tiny jog-trot; it pit-pit-pits under you while you just sit there gliding along. It makes a riding lawnmower look like a rank bronc. When I'd tired of ringwork (ha! more like ringputter) I rode back up around the barn, jogged a bit in the driveway, then ambled back to in front of the paddock and slid off, praising my magnificent steed mightily.

Said steed took it as his due. He cheerfully followed me back into the paddock, amiably stood for the removal of his bridle, then went back to his hay -- Well, no. No, actually he stood facing the gate, looking at me expectantly. Waiting. Beaming a simple steady message at me: "I worked for you, now you reward me." Apparently neck skritches and verbal praise don't qualify. Fortunately, I had a stash of what would qualify in the barn, and once he got his horse cookies (Meadow Mints, to be exact) he decided the deal was complete and went back to his hay.

This guy is a hoot.

Update: And here we are!

One reason why my cats stay indoors

2010-01-27T16:38:00.001-05:00

It's an eternal, no doubt unresolvable debate: Cats -- indoors only or allowed to roam? Mine never go out, for several reasons. One winter night, not too long ago, I was forcibly reminded of one of them.

I was at the farm, having given the horses their late feeding, and was standing by the paddock gate, listening to the faint far night cries of coyotes, when suddenly, seemingly much closer (the nearest hayfield? locating sounds is chancy at night), there was a burst of excited coyote yapping, two terrible shrieks of a cat -- then silence.

I yelled something after the first shriek, something really useful, like maybe "Hey!" which I daresay wasn't even heard by the predators, then walked out past the little pond and around the knoll in the moonlight, looking for -- what? The mangled remains of one of the barn cats, I suppose. Found nothing. All three of the barn cats were there the next day, and there are feral cats eking out an existence in the farm's fields. A walk in the next day's light around the knoll revealed no trace of whatever had happened the night before.

I still feel sad and a little sick whenever I think of it, and I think of it most nights when I do late feeding.

Roll out the barrel

2010-01-25T21:28:00.004-05:00

Will be what I'll do tomorrow when I turn Ben out.

The weather was horrid today (as those of you who live near me are all too well aware), warmer than usual but lashed by high winds and driving rain starting around midday. After a few hours of huddling in the run-in, Ben, Commander, Counterpoint and Cholla were all glad in late afternoon to go into the barn and their warm dry hay-stocked stalls for the night. I'd put rain sheets on both Ben and Commander in the morning, in anticipation of the crappy weather, and when they came in I left the sheets on so they could dry on the backs of their four-legged clothes racks.

Tonight I whipped off Ben's rain sheet and thought "Hmmmmmmmmmm........ looking a bit rotund, are we?" Then instead of putting him back in the blue winter blanket he's been wearing for the bitter-cold weather, I grabbed his lighter-weight plaid blanket from the tack room, flung it over the mighty bay back, and began to do up the straps.

I had to let out the belly cross-straps and the leg straps. The boy's tubbed out. I'm sure there are ribs in there somewhere, but darned if I could find them when I ran my hands over his sides.

Sigh............ No more evening grain, just the morning's with the supplements, and I'll be cutting back even that small amount. It was only about three cups' worth at each meal, but down it goes to two, maybe one and a half. For both of the bay boys, since Commander has also gained weight since I got him. He's not a lardass like his big buddy, but it's best not to let him get any plumper.

Oddly enough, neither seemed to notice that they got only hay at tonight's late feeding, and not the usual grain ("Candy! Horsey crack cocaine!") in their bucket. One can only hope they continue to be bought off so easily.

Pictures of an Introduction

2010-01-24T19:09:00.002-05:00

November 5 was the day Commander came to live with Ben at Alprilla Farm. A 19-year-old Morgan gelding, he was a "free to good home" adoption.

We introduced them with halters and lead ropes on at first, Rick -- Commander's then-owner -- holding Commander and me holding Ben. Commander did the squeal-strike a couple of times, which didn't seem to faze Ben at all; but mostly both horses were much more interested in the hay piles scattered liberally around the paddock. So after a bit we took their halters off and left them to their own devices.

Left to their own devices, they ate hay. Commander puttered about a bit, sampled what grass there was, and decided the hay was better. Ben ate hay. They migrated from pile to pile, and when one happened to pass near the other, there was mutual surveying before both went back to the important business of eating hay.

They didn't seem tense, just curious. Both boys are mid to late teens and both have been around the block a few times.

Sometimes they got quite close, and seemed quite relaxed about the whole thing. Curious, but relaxed.

They actually did eat from the same hay pile once or twice, though mostly they stuck to separate tables.

Rick and his girlfriend Carol stayed for quite a while, making sure all would be well and enjoying the sight of their good old buddy settling into his new life. Finally, Rick said goodbye.

When the truck and trailer pulled out to the road and drove away, Commander galloped to the corner of the paddock nearest to the road and neighed, then watched till the rig was out of sight.

Then he returned to eating hay.

So how well did the two boys get along as the day progressed? Observe Ben thoughtfully, experimentally come up behind Commander and thoughtfully, experimentally chomp down on Commander's tailhead:

Can you believe it? Ben, what are you thinking?!? Here, let's zoom in for a closeup of this madness:

So what happened?!?

Commander flicked his ears back as I yelled at Ben.

Then..................................

Commander, never letting go of his mouthful of hay, walked away.

Meanwhile, the white boys were watching this with undisguised fascination. Whenever Commander went near the fence Counterpoint (a/k/a Herd King) especially was eager to sniff noses, never forgetting to be as studly as possible. Cholla hung back a bit, as befits his lower social status, but wanted to get acquainted too.

Have you noticed that every picture of Commander so far, he's got hay hanging out of his mouth?

"Wonder what they're saying about me?"

In fact, the toughest part for Commander of this whole introduction thing turned out to be trying to get a drink of water -- Counterpoint seized the opportunity to get some nose-to-nose contact, kept blocking poor Commander's access to the water, till finally I climbed into the white boys' side and distracted Counterpoint long enough for the new guy to get his drink.

Eventually Ben and Commander went into the run-in.

We'd wondered whether there'd be competition, dog-in-the-mangering, conflict.

Nope. Other than Commander moving away if Ben moved toward him, they hung out and ate peaceably.

So life goes on at Alprilla Farm, with one happily settled in newcomer, who knows the value of a good mouthful of hay.

The joys of colonoscopy prep

2010-01-13T19:03:00.001-05:00

It's changed somewhat in the eight years between my previous one and this evening's reaming out.

Eight years ago I had to choke down two little bottles of the single most nauseatingly vile stuff I have ever encountered. This time I've had to mix an entire bottle of a powdered laxative into 96 ounces of Gatorade (anything but red), which is far more

excuse me

palatable than the other stuff. Of course, I now associate Gatorade with colonoscopy prep, but fortunately it's not a drink I was a fan of before, so developing a distasteful association is no

excuse me

big deal. So here I am, quaffing my way through two 32-ounce jugs of the stuff, one eight-ounce glassful every 15 minutes, with the happy prospect of getting up at 5:00 a.m. tomorrow morning in

excuse me

order to gulp my way, at the same 15-minute intervals, through the last jugful. Then I get to wait till almost noon for the deed itself to be done. Which is probably the least unpleasant part of the whole process, since they knock you out for it and you don't remember a thing. I recall from last time, I was chatting with the nurse as she got me positioned, then I was asking her "So when does it start?" and she laughed and

excuse me

said, "It's already done." So if you can get through the prep, the procedure itself is a breeze.

Of course, I am not allowed to have any solid food today, and for several days preceding Prep Day it's recommended one avoid anything but low-residue foods. While the instruction sheet doesn't say this, it's a damned good idea NOT to try to load up with sustenance the day before no-food day because you WILL have to clear all that out, and the more

excuse me

that's in your system, the more that has to be flushed from your piping. I've been on a low-residue diet for weeks now because of my gastric problems and have had to do liquid fast days now and then, so it wasn't all that difficult to simply dial my

excuse me

intake back a bit farther. Yesterday, in fact, was a ratcheting-down day of egg whites in broth, yogurt, and jello, all in small quantities, so today's colonic cleansing isn't too dreadful. Too bad I didn't

excuse me

know these things for my first colonoscopy! That prep was miserable for more than just the disgusting

excuse me

vile nasty stuff I had to drink -- and no, mixing it into apple juice, as one well-meaning friend suggested, didn't help one bit! So all in all, this isn't so bad.

At least it's better than

excuse me

a sharp stick in the eye.

Riders on Crane's Beach

2009-12-31T17:20:00.001-05:00

Whatever the gait, the going on Crane's Beach in Horse Season (October 1st through March 31st) is mighty fine, and the region's riders make the most of it.

People hack out alone:

They ride out in pairs -- oh, what fun it is to ride the beach with a friend!

And they ride out in groups.

It's fun for the whole family (if the whole family rides):

Here are some favorite images from my photography forays. I love this pair -- the pony is such a sturdy, steady fellow.

Simultaneous nose-itches:

(This next one is now my horse! Given to me as a good home):

A pair who obviously trust each other very much:

Some of the horses find the water fascinating:

Synchronicity:

And finally, the gallop -- oh, yes, you've been waiting for the gallop, haven't you?

An odd thought while pushing a wheelbarrow

2009-12-30T17:56:00.001-05:00

It was, I think, the third, perhaps fourth wheelbarrow load I'd pushed out from the barn to the manure pile. I was nearly there when a thought popped into my head:

"I feel better."

Just that: "I feel better."

I've been suffering from digestive problems for several months now. Stretches of decent health have alternated with stretches of more or less considerable misery. A colonoscopy is scheduled for mid-January to see what the heck is going on in there. In the last week the misery has ratcheted up and expanded its repertoire. Going once again from solid food to clear liquids , yogurt and jello, and starting a new course of ciprofloxacin has done little to relieve the current discomfort.

So the sudden irruption in my mind of "I feel better" was surprising. I thought about that thought as I dumped the wheelbarrow, returned to the barn and continued mucking. Given that the belly discomfort was still niggling at me, it seemed an odd thought. And yet, it felt right. I realized that, for the first time in a couple of days, I wasn't tending (or fighting the tendency) to hunch over protectively. Wasn't wholly wrapped in a dull fog of inward focus.

Now, some several hours later, I continue to feel as if a measure of misery has dissipated. Oh, there's still enough of it bubbling in my gut to tell me things are not right, but incremental progress is better than none, eh?

Ponies in the snow! Having fun!

2009-12-24T19:06:00.001-05:00

A few days ago we here in Massachusetts had our first real snow of the winter, and when I put Ben (Thoroughbred in blanket) and Commander (Morgan) out the next day, they wasted no time in enjoying the fluffy white stuff. Ben waded about, nosing through the unblemished powder:

"What is this stuff?" (You'd think he'd know by now, having lived through 17 winters, but he's not the brightest bulb on the tree.) "How does it taste?"

Commander, having paused by the run-in to grab his usual mouthful of hay, headed out to see what all the excitement was.

Ignoring the silly Thoroughbred boinking about, he headed past...

...till he'd found just the right spot to drop...

... and roll, and wallow, and roll:

Ben decided that was a great idea.

Wheeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wallow wallow wallow:

Wheeeeeeeee me too! Said Ben.

Shake it up, baby!

Feeling mighty fine!

"Hey, Ben -- you coming?"

"Comin' at ya!"

Yeehaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!

Shake it, baby!

Hey there, how ya doin?

There's something about playing in the snow that brings out the ATTITUDE in even the mildest-mannered of horses.

And so I leave you with one last ponypic, and wish you a happy holiday and an even happier new year.

The Pied Piper of Alprilla Farm

2009-09-15T16:13:00.009-04:00

That would be me.

This afternoon I found Counterpoint and Cholla lazing about the run-in while Ben pecked at the triage paddock. After completing my chores and bug-spraying Ben I led him out to his field, unhaltered him, and watched him set to on the grass near the ring. The C-boys trickled out to the lane, where they nibbled at the overgrazed, table-flat grass nubbins.

I noticed that, while the near-house field and the far field at the end of the lane were closed off, it appeared that the left-turn alley at the end of the lane, leading to the farthest field, was open. Why didn't the grayboys go out there? Was it because they were staying near Ben? I resolved to do something about it.

Interlude: For those of you unfamiliar with the landscape of which I speak, herewith a visual aid, taken back in May, when Ben was in with the other two. To Counterpoint's left is Ben's little triage paddock; directly above him is the gate to Ben's field. Above that, across the field, you can see a gap in the far fence; that is the gateway which leads to the farthest field, when it's open to Ben's side of the complex. Toward the top right, at the end of the lane, rightward of where that solitary large bush sits, is the gateway to the C-boys' farther field, and the left-hand turn into the fenced-in alley leading to the farthest field. That alley can be gated shut near the Benside gate.

Got that? Good; then scroll below the photo and on with my tale.

So I went into the lane, halter and leadrope over my shoulder in case I had to persuade them to move along, and walked up to and past first Cholla, then Counterpoint, offering a greeting and a face rub as I passed; then, a length or two beyond the Herd King, I turned back, beckoned, and said "Come on."

Counterpoint came on. Cholla followed.

We three continued down the lane, me - a length; Counterpoint - a length; Cholla. I turned the corner out of the lane, wondering how long they'd stay with me. They kept coming. I walked the length of the alley, with them close behind. I walked out a few yards into the farthest field. They followed, with an expression of "Hey, look at all this tall grass! Who'da thunk?" and dropped their heads to gobble.

Ben, meanwhile, was horrified that we were all leaving him behind. He rushed up to the closed gate between his field and the farthest field, a look of "What? Wait! Where are you going?!?" on his face. Reassured by the sight of the C-boys grazing just beyond the fence, he dropped his head into a part of his field he had heretofore left ungrazed and set to mowing.

By the time I left some several minutes later, Cholla had grazed his way toward the center of the fresh field; Counterpoint was working his way along the edge of the ditch on the outer edge; and Ben's muzzle was buried in grass up close to the boundary.

Oh, by the way, here's a look at that same area in late July, after yet another of this dour summer's flooding rains:

My (not so) Little Pony's Spring Fling

2009-09-13T23:54:00.005-04:00

There's a guy in my life I'm a devoted slave to. I serve his every need, fulfill his every whim, and gladly support his idle butt.

A very handsome butt, I might add, the culmination of 16.1 hands of beautiful bay Thoroughbred. He's aging (but then, so am I), not as spry as he used to be (ditto), and content to putter where once he galloped (ditto ditto). He's been my boy, my responsibility, my pride and joy, for eight years now. I board him at a friend's farm near my home and do the daily chores that horses demand. It's a lot of work, an unending commitment, and entails a fair amount of heavy lifting, but I wouldn't give it up for the world.

Besides the physical exercise, the mental refreshment is essential for my wellbeing. Taking time out from a deskbound occupation as a proofreader of often dry, dense, and tedious material to shovel real instead of metaphorical manure is a tonic for the soul. Mucking out a stall has multiple benefits: it leaves the mind free to ponder, in undistracted quiet, whatever that mind may wander to; it offers physical activity that tones the body without overwhelming an aging and creaky frame; and when it's done and the once-swamplike stall is clean and neat and Just. So. -- well, there's real satisfaction in that.

One of the pleasures of owning horses is watching them at liberty. Their behavior, as individuals and as part of a herd, is endlessly fascinating. Horses do not dissemble; once you can read their body language, you know what they're thinking, how they're feeling. Their wants and needs are simple, and easily met: Give them amicable companions, clean fresh water, a safe open space to move about, and good stuff to eat, and they are content. The transition from a winter diet of hay to the succulent new shoots of spring grass is a special treat for them, one which must be sparingly doled out at first lest they overindulge and make themselves sick. So when, this past spring, my Ben and his two companions had their first day out on grass, it was a joyous occasion.

The horses weren't let out into the fields themselves, as the new grass was still just poking its way up and could be ruined by too much traffic, to soon grazing. So the boys went out into what we call the lane, their access to the adjoining fields oncstraied by electric tape gates. Somehow, they managed to slake their hunger for GRASS!!!!

Ben, the bay, found plenty to occupy himself devouring. His grubby companion, Cholla (who never met a mud puddle he didn't like for rolling, wallowing, and generally filthifying himself) also dug in. Life was good.

The birds were happy to have the horses out on the grass, stirring up insects which our avian friends could gobble up. And yes, I have indeed seen birds perching on the horses' backs now and then.

There was just one teensy little problem in Paradise: Counterpoint, the Herd King, who considers it his duty to keep Ben and Cholla apart -- why, I don't know, since they got along fine when Himself isn't around -- felt compelled to rush over to break them up.

Ben, being no fool, fled.

Now, it's embarrassing enough to get rousted; but to have it happen in front of a snickering barn cat -- oh, the humiliation!

Nutmeg, the barn cat, proceeded to ROFLHAO.

Counterpoint, satisfied that Order Had Been Restored, turned away from his pursuit.

And so everyone got back to the business at hand: Eating. Eating GRASS.

Too soon, too soon, it was time to bring the horses in off the grass, to wait till tomorrow for their next feast. Was Ben wistful as he looked out over the once and again forbidden Paradise?

Hospice: My mother's story

2009-07-30T22:51:00.001-04:00

My mother suffered terribly, without remit despite Fentanyl patches and other powerful painkillers, for much of the last few years of her life. Crippled by arthritis to a near-helpless mass of suffering flesh, wheelchairbound, dependent on portable oyxgen, her hearing and eyesight failing, her hands barely functioning; in and out of hospitals for a succession of crises that never quite carried her off; dependent on dozens of pills a day to go on, she spoke openly and with increasing urgency of wanting to die. Her mind was as sharp as her body was enfeebled; she knew exactly what her circumstances were. My three siblings and I didn't want to lose her but respected her right to decide for herself, at age 89, after one last hospitalization, that she wanted no more lifesaving interventions, that it was time to turn to hospice for their help in easing her last weeks of life.

Hospice was wonderful. The people we dealt with were kind, understanding, well-versed in what was needed -- for the soon-to-be-bereaved living as much as the soon-to-die -- and swiftly arranged all that was necessary for Mom to be liberated from the hospital and brought back to the assisted living that had been her home for the last decade. There, in her suite filled with the furnishings and mementos of her life; with her family at her side; with her devoted friends among both residents and staff in the facility coming to express their love, she had 24-hour nursing and, at her will, at the times of her choosing, enough morphine to ease -- finally! -- the bulk of the pain that had tormented her for so long.

She lingered for two weeks, sinking slowly but peacefully into the last sleep from which she never awakened. It was a kind and merciful and gentle death. Up until the last day or so Mom was conscious, kept her wits, knew what was going on, and was comforted by it. She looked forward not with resignation but with relief to the fast-approaching final sleep. We who were left behind had our grief greatly eased by seeing how kindly and gently she was eased on her final journey, a journey that was her choice. Hospice made sure we also had whatever resources we needed to cope with our loss.

And now, for mere money, for their own obscene profit, heartless scum dare to take the good name of hospice and drag it through muck of their own making; to spit upon the manifest good that hospice does; to denigrate purely for their own sick and twisted propaganda the kind hearts and generous souls and devoted labors of those whose only crime is that they stand in the way of the insurance industry juggernaut. They are contemptible, and anyone who knows the truth and willingly goes along with their scaremongering is equally contemptible.

On turning 60

2009-02-09T11:47:00.000-05:00

Well, here it is. Another tenth-century of my life has passed. The earlier decade turns weren't all that bad; in fact, I wondered why people made such a kerfluffle about them. Waking up on the Big Day as age 30, say, or 40 even, wasn't such a big deal, didn't feel any different than 29 or 39.

The half-century mark was a bit discomforting, but not enough to knock me off my more or less even keel. Gray hair? I've had it since my 30s anyway, and now that the whole front half of the mop has silvered, it's such a pure white it's kind of cool actually. Health? Pretty good, all in all; no major worries. Life circumstances comfortable if not opulent, and no major regrets.

But today I am 60. Today I mark the day by going to have a Holter monitor applied for a 24-hour wearing to see why my premature ventricular contractions have been kicking up lately.* Today I feel arthritic twinges in my fingers. Today my knees remind me that they haven't forgiven me for the stress I've placed on them over the course of time. Today I contemplate the physique toting the mind around and ruefully concede that, no matter how many more pounds I patiently, ploddingly melt off, I will never, ever have back the figure of my youth. Or get rid of the old-person's neck.

Now, it's still not a bad life I've got going here. Other than the current internal fuss, my health overall remains good. Both sides of my family tree have demonstrated longevity. I have good friends, dear critter companions, and a satisfying daily round. My self-employment should be sufficiently recessionproof that my income and home won't be seriously threatened. All in all, I could be a helluva lot worse off.

Still............... FRAKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!! I'M FRAKKIN 60!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*Odds are, it's a hiatal hernia which is gigging the vagal nerve which is triggering the PVCs -- bothersome, annoying, and at times downright uncomfortable but not lethal. Still, not good.

Faceplant update

2008-12-07T02:26:00.002-05:00

Got some ibuprofen aboard now, midnightish; just one tab, but it's helping -- so long as I don't move the bad shoulder in certain ways. Unfortunately, that shoulder is the side I normally sleep on. Heaven only knows how it's going to feel in the morning. But it could be worse, yes, I acknowledge it could be much worse. No bruises have developed, and every body part is functioning more or less normally.

What I do appear to have are very sore and/or strained muscles. To ease them, a couple of times this afternoon and evening I've rubbed in a camphor/menthol/methyl salicylate ointment I found in the medicine cabinet. That does seem to be a bit helpful. Smells good, too. The greatest discomfort, with occasional stabs of outright pain, is in the spot I'd injured a few months ago, where the right-arm deltoid ties into the biceps. The left deltoid insertion is bothering me too, though not nearly as severely. In both arms there's also extension of soreness into the biceps and triceps themselves. That's where I've been applying the ointment.

I can tell my brachial plexus is going to be stiffened up tomorrow; it's already grumbling. The nape of my neck is also muttering vague threats. Some fingers are offering disgruntled comments on my clumsiness as well. My wrists likewise are not happy about their role in my failed attempt to stave off gravity. The lower back figures what the hey, might as well jump on the bandwagon too.

At least my glasses didn't go flying off and get lost in the leaf litter. Instead they stuck close enough to my face for it to ram them into the underlying solid surface of the trail. While my face is unmarked, the lens frame is canted inward at the bottom and one earpiece is winged outward from parallel. I was able to jigger them back into shape enough to wear the rest of the time I was out, but they need a visit to the eye doctor for reformation.

Ah, well, it could have been worse. The last time I took a faceplant fall like that, I broke my elbow. Of course, that was onto asphalt rather than leaf-littered grass. So I should count my blessings, eh?

There will be another update when I arise tomorrow morning. Assuming I do in fact arise tomorrow morning. Assuming I'm not too stiff to do more than slither out of bed and hobble painfully as far as the catfood dispenser, lest the felines take breakfast into their own paws, then collapse, whimpering, onto the nearest soft surface.

Wherein the author does a faceplant

2008-12-06T19:09:00.003-05:00

It all started out so well this morning....

Or, um, no. No, actually, it didn't start out all that well; for whatever reason I'd been unable to get to sleep till nigh on 5:00 a.m. Only the desperation move of getting out of my sleepless bed to do some proofreading finally coaxed Morpheus out of hiding. (Or was it the Benadryl?) When the alarm went off a little before 10:00, it was so tempting to just shut it off and go back to sleep.

But no! No, I'd planned to go on the inaugural hike over a newly opened section of trails in the Appleton Grass Rides this morning, to be there in time for the ceremonial ribbon-cutting, congratulatory speech-making, and group march. Stride-off time was 11:00 a.m.

So, sleep-deprived as I was, I struggled upright, fed the cats, pulled on suitable clothes, and headed out -- forgetting in my foggy haste a pair of mittens or gloves, though as it turned out the day was pleasant enough that they weren't needed for more than a fit of futile fretting on the drive over.

There was a good turnout -- couple of dozen, easy, with a lighthearted leavening of dogs revelling in their off-leash freedom. We did the ceremonials, then headed out. I found myself in the first cluster, marching alongside two of the men who'd done yeoman service in planning and clearing this abandoned and overgrown segment of the Rides. Walking briskly over the leaf-strewn undulations of the ride, we were merrily chatting, enjoying the day....

Then my toe caught the low stub of a cut-off sapling, hidden by the leaf litter, lurking unseen till my tripping over the damned thing revealed it.

Next thing I know, I'm toppling forward -- downhill, just to make it all more exciting -- my abrupt embrace of gravity ending in a full-body faceplant, complete with arms flung forward in a futile attempt to break my fall, which did nothing except rewrench a previously injured shoulder.

My solicitous companions, reassured by my regaining my feet and my evident possession of full mobility, were kind enough not to laugh. I brushed off the leaf litter coating my forward aspect, ruefully examined the sad warping of my glasses' frames, winced at the sullen protests offered by my shoulder at any attempt to move it in certain directions, and went on with the hike.

I knew by the time we returned to our starting point and I got into my car -- well, not my car, actually; the one I'm renting while my own dear little Scion is in the body shop getting healed of the damage inflicted in a moment of inattention on my part; but that's another story -- when I drove off I knew I was going to be feeling some after-effects, and so it has proven.

My first stop after Appleton was the barn, to visit and ride my horse Ben.

Lucky boy! Between my sleep-deficit fog and the low mutterings of developing body aches, I'd had enough after only ten, maybe fifteen minutes. Well, not wholly lucky; I turned over his reins to the young woman who exercises him for me, so he didn't entirely get out of working, just didn't have to bear as heavy a burden, or work as correctly as I insist on expecting from him.

Then home again, home again, jiggedy-jig, for a belated lunch, a reviving cup of coffee, and a judicious ingestion of aspirin, with stronger stuff in reserve if things really start going south. Now, some five hours later, I can actually trace the lines of the various aches brewing in arms, legs, neck, and back. It'll be, um, interesting to see how stiff I'll be when I get up (or try to, anyway) tomorrow morning.

So, that was my mostly excellent adventure today. I do hope tomorrow isn't quite so exciting.

In Praise of Coasting: The Results Are In!

2008-07-17T22:33:00.005-04:00

It's been a bit more than a month now since I began my experiment with coasting, and it is with surprised delight (and perhaps a touch of smug self-congratulation) that I report the results: It works! It really works!

I've done two mileage checks so far. The first produced a figure of 37.5 miles per gallon. The second came in at 36.79 mpg. I will confess to having slacked off a bit after the first mileage check, and am now driving with renewed dedication to the fine art of extending inertia to its safe limits.

So, how much fuel economy have I achieved? According to this website, a 2006 Scion xB should get overall gas mileage of 28 mpg. Not having done a baseline mileage check before the Great Coasting Experiment began, I can't be sure, but I believe I'd been getting around 30 mpg previously. So this technique is definitely paying off. At 30 mpg, driving 12,000 miles in a year would require 400 gallons of gas. Up the fuel economy to 37 mpg and the gasoline consumed drops to a smidgen over 324 gallons. At four bucks a gallon, that's some decent savings right there -- $304. Since the price of petrol seems determined to continue its ascent toward the stratosphere, future savings are looking even better.

And now, having tested my hypothesis and succeeded well beyond my modest expectations, I'm gung-ho to keep on coasting. Is 40 mpg achievable? Let's find out!

In Praise of Coasting

2008-06-14T00:42:00.002-04:00

Recently I came across an offbeat proposal for saving gas when one drives: Coasting. The author (whom I can't remember now) noted how he (pretty sure it was a he) has been letting off the gas pedal and coasting down hills for a while now, and has seen a modest but real decrease in his fuel consumption.

The idea intrigued me, and I tried it out. The driving I do, primarily at nonrush hours on gently undulating back roads, is well-suited to such an experiment, offering a plethora of opportunities and a paucity of other drivers I might inconvenience by failing to put the pedal to the metal at all times.

Well, whaddaya know -- when you look for them, there are lots and lots of coasting spots. Doesn't have to be a steep slope; even a gentle decline works just fine. Doesn't have to be a long stretch; even a few dozen yards here and there will add up over time to a respectable total. It's surprising how slowly the car's speed will slow even on a near-flat surface, and how far inertia will carry one beyond the base of a respectable hill before mere gravity gives not enough go. It's become a game for me now, seeing how many times on each drive the coast is clear.

And it's so easy, such a small maneuver; just lift one's foot ever so slightly, just clear of the pedal, poised for the soft descent that will initiate a smooth surge of acceleration when it's needed. Smooth -- that's the ticket. Smooth is good; smooth acceleration (and deceleration, for that matter) burns less gas than stomping on pedal and brake.

I haven't been paying sufficient attention to my gas mileage to note what sort of fuel savings this is achieving, in part because my little Scion's fuel economy is so good anyway that it's not much of an issue for me. What I have noticed as a benefit is the psychic gain: Not just, not even primarily the small glow of satisfaction at conserving energy, but rather the smoothing away of stress. Coasting, I find, is calming. Easing off the pedal eases off whatever tension I happen to be carrying. Coasting creates a relaxed focus on the now of driving, an enhanced awareness of the terrain I traverse.

Coasting is cool beans!

Uncomfortable ruminations: A friend responds

2008-03-24T23:55:00.002-04:00

A good friend read my recent ruminations and emailed me a thoughtful and perceptive reply, one that I felt was very much worth sharing with others. With his permission, and with small identifying details redacted, I post it here:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Don’t be so hard on yourself. Biases exist. How we handle them is what counts.

It’s one thing to accept a biased view of humankind, without question, and to act in accordance with those biases. It is quite another thing to be aware of unsubstantiated views or predispositions or beliefs – biases – that we actively and conscientiously seek to account for in our judgments so that reason and an absence of bias inform our actions and choices. The idea that one can be unbiased is as illusory as the notion that a journalist can be objective. Biases need to be acknowledged, either overtly when writing opinion columns, or internally, when acting as a citizen in society.

I think of myself as unprejudiced, that is, I would not let ethnic or racial or gender biases color my opinions or judgments about others. But that does not mean I have no stereotypes that inhabit my subconscious. It would be absurd to think that. I am a product of my times, my upbringing, my life experiences. Consider: If I were to delude myself into thinking I had purged biases from my psyche, does that mean I would be comfortable living in an inner city ghetto? (Indeed, isn’t my characterization of it as inner city and ghetto just biases?) I would no more be comfortable, at home, in the society of the inner city than I would be living amongst the Southies of Boston.

People are not all the same; they differ vastly in sophistication, social mores, education, interest in the arts, intelligence, sensitivity – the list can go on and on. I believe what we as enlightened citizens of the world owe to our fellow humans is an unconditional respect: I respect other people, I recognize their values (even when they are different than mine), and I grant them the absolute right to be different than I am and to believe differently than I do. But I have no obligation to adjust my convictions to meet theirs, nor do I have to accord their beliefs equal weight in my own thinking. I simply need to respect them, and tolerate the differences between us.

It is fashionable today to equate different cultures, i.e., cultural relativity. That’s nonsense. I respect the fact that the culture of others may be different, vastly so, from my own; and I strive to be tolerant of differences I can’t understand or that seem nonsensical. Again, I see it as a question of respect: every person, and his/her culture, if it’s different than mine, must have my respect for me to say with truth that I am not prejudiced. But all cultures are not equal. The culture of the Maori tribes is in no way of equal value to the great, long-developing cultures of Western society, of which I am a member.

Allah and Muslims may be a great god and a great culture, respectively. But can you imagine trying to live in a Muslim culture? I couldn’t! I’m different than they are, and I have absolutely no desire to submit myself to their cultural strictures. But – I have no desire to suppress, or outlaw, or restrict their cultures.

I think that, again, makes me unprejudiced. Unbiased? No. My biases here are plain: I think my culture is better than theirs. And, concomitantly, I’m sure Muslims think their culture is better than mine. That’s fine with me. That’s the way it should be.

The fact that certain biases stubbornly persist in your psyche, despite your discomfort that they are there, is not a surprise. Your biases, beliefs, values, were inculcated in you from a very early age, and produced the person you are, with the character and integrity that you possess. Your intelligence, and growth as an individual, allow you to identify what are unsubstantiated beliefs – but that doesn’t mean they fade away. It means you have the tools available to you to make sure you act rationally and in a modern, enlightened way, because you know how to reckon with your biases.

Curiously, in my Catholic school upbringing, I learned the phrase “the occasion of sin.” The definition of that term included “thinking” a thought that, if acted out, would be a sin. In other words, either committing a sin or thinking about a sinful act were the same: a sin. Bullshit! (Though it took me years of guilt to realize that was a cockeyed notion.) I love my wife, and am devoted to her. And if I pass a gorgeous woman on the street and the thought flickers through my mind what spending the night with her might be like, that is in no way unfaithful to my wife, nor does it mean my affection for my wife is a sham. It means I have chosen to be loyal to one woman, my wife, but the god-given nature of men to be attracted to females hasn’t ended just because I made the choice to restrict myself to my wife.

Biases are bad only when one either doesn’t recognize the bias and acts therefore in a biased way; or, recognizing the bias, fails to adjust his actions to effectively neutralize the effect of the bias.

We are imperfect beings. No manner of perfection is vouchsafed to us. How earnestly we seek to know our imperfections and then effectively deal with them is, I believe, the measure of our success as tolerant individuals.

I’m sure you don’t think [our mutual friend] was biased towards white people because she chose to move back to Hawaii, where she could be more comfortable. We humans are communal people; we need to belong to a community. You can’t “belong” to a community in which you are uncomfortable. Seeking “your own kind” is not a form of bias, but a recognition of the human condition.

In today’s America, it is a strong indicator of biases successfully overcome if you can happily vote for a black Presidential candidate or, if you are a man, a woman candidate. A truly biased person could not do that.

Curiously mutable numbers

2008-03-23T12:34:00.004-04:00

One would think, by using Quicken for keeping a checking account, that errors would, if not vanish, be far likelier to recede to insignificance -- a transposed or typoed number here, a failure to record a transaction there; small disruptions to the smooth procession of orderly numbers. Despite such glitches, the self-kept record should accord well with the bank's figures as shown in monthly statements and realtime inquiries via either phone or Internet.

Ha, I say.

A few days ago I dribbled away almost an hour trying to reconcile the disparity between what my generated-by-Quicken records show, and what Citizens Bank insists is my current balance in my business account.

I failed miserably. No matter how I tweaked and checked, the disparity remained, and what's worse, the actual quantity of the error kept morphing depending on what adjustments I tried making to account for it.

Gah. Once upon a time, my personal checking account so utterly refused to be disentangled that I opened a new one and let the old one lie fallow (other than a monthly automatic withdrawal for health insurance) for a few months till I could make the adjusting entry to resolve the whole mess: "Bank says."

I sure hope that remedy won't be necessary this time.

Some uncomfortable ruminations

2008-03-23T12:17:00.002-04:00

I watched Obama's televised speech on race and racism in America, and afterwards did some soul-searching: an uncomfortable and at times discomforting process, which is, no doubt, why I tend to avoid it. Socrates may have asserted that the unexamined life is not worth living, but did he ever spend the wee hours pondering the uglier aspects of his life and preferring to pull the covers over his head?

Obviously, I'm not the only person moved to such reflections by the speech. On a message board I frequent, a member invited others to post their experiences: "I'd really like to see a thread where people just try to understand the racial dynamics and baggage that each person in America carries. Disparities in opportunity. Disparities in treatment. Unequal histories. Fears, hopes, hurts, and aspirations. I'd like to see us lay out our own racial baggage."

I struggled with whether to respond. However much I may babble on publicly about superficial things, I rarely let out my inner demons for a run where others can see them. But I found myself compelled to air out what's been running through my mind ever since the speech, what's in fact been bubbling away inside for quite a while. So, as disquieting as it is for me to reveal so much of myself, here is what I wrote:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was born in 1949 and grew up in a mostly middle class white suburb north of Boston. There may have been a black family or two in the town, but black people were pretty much an abstraction until I went to college. My family and their friends never made racist statements, that I can remember; they didn't demonstrate anger and alarm at the civil rights movement of King's time; heck, I have a vague memory of participating in some racial justice and harmony march in Boston, as a teenager.

And I was in the company of Negroes (the polite term then) for the first time in my life, and I didn't know how to talk to them, how to even look at them (being naturally shy didn't help). I departed from that experience no closer to any understanding of those people than I'd had before.

Those people. That's what black folks were to me. Beings so different from me that I couldn't see past the abstraction to the real people. Oh, I had imbibed the tenets of civil rights, even though my parents were lower middle class Republicans -- Republicans of that ancient strain that flourished when fiscal conservatism and belief in a strong defense hadn't been hijacked into a patriotic cover for extreme social-issues fanaticism and empire-building. The Congregational church I grew up attending was socially conscious and taught it from the pulpit. I believed in equality and justice and the American Dream for all -- but I never had to confront the reality of their application to those people.

In college I met blacks and got to know them as individuals, as real people, for the first time. I tried hard to comprehend what small glimpses they granted me of the black experience. Can't pretend that I did very well at it, but still, it built bridges for me, for my appreciation of folks whose differences, sometimes vast differences from me did not belie the underlying fact of our mutual humanity.

And yet, deeply rooted in my mind, ineradicable to this day, from childhood on were and are a whole host of ugly racist stereotypes. Where the hell did they come from? How did they get in there and why can't I cleanse my mind of them?

Where did they come from? From the society I grew up in, of course, a childhood time and place where blacks on professional sports teams were still a novelty; where the faces on television were all white, all the time; where assumptions of white superiority were so deep-rooted that they didn't have to be declared or debated -- that's just the way it was.

Now, I don't concede any validity to these stereotypes -- in my conscious word, deed, or thought. Over the decades since college I've tried my damnedest to live up to the liberty and justice for all ideal. I've rejoiced at the rolling back of prejudice and constricted opportunity in so many ways.

But the ugly thoughts are still there. Beaten back, beaten down, beaten into a low dull intermittent muttering -- they refuse to die. I've become resigned, at age 59, to the fact that, shameful as it is, difficult as it is to admit, I've got some racism in me that I can't scour out; the best I can do is shut the closet door, ignore the tiny hammering on it, and live my life according to the ideals I want to believe are the real me.

And that, my friends, is the racism of one Northeastern white liberal. Whether I like it or not.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As the conversation continued, this memory worked its way to the surface:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[A previous post] reminds me of a woman I knew some 15 years ago, a decade or so younger than me. She was of white and Japanese parentage, with a Japanese surname, and simply gorgeous, as a person as well as in her looks. She had two young sons by a black father. They were also lovely, lovely little young men -- physically, yes, but also in demeanor because my friend worked her butt off to raise them well despite being a single mother holding down a full-time, demanding job.

She was living in a close-in suburb of Boston when I knew her, but within a couple of years of our meeting she told me she was moving to Hawaii. "It's because," she said, "well, because....."

"Because you want to live where you and your kids look like everyone else," I interjected.

"Yes! Yes, that's exactly it!"

And we had a discussion of how hard it was for her to live among people who couldn't matter-of-factly accept her and her children because they didn't fit into the mold of their milieu.

I've been thinking about her a lot lately.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So there it is -- the confused muddle of a "typical white person" who really, really does want to be true to her ideals but must confront the fact that their foundations rest upon muck as well as granite.

Still dryshod (so far)

2008-03-11T22:32:00.003-04:00

The weekend's rains were heavy, but not enough to send the Ipswich into full flood.

Yet.

The river has crept another foot or two higher, swamping the base of trees rooted low on its banks, flirting with the lowest-lying verges but not quite ready to leap free of its channel. The current is running stronger, bullying its way through the roiling tidal surges between the EBSCO dam and the Choate Bridge.

No, as of today it's not like this, not like the ferocious flow of 2006. But those closest trees on the right, drowned perhaps a yard deep in this picture, line banks where the river rips past now barely a yard below them.

There's no significant precipitation forecast until Sunday, which may come as snow or sleet rather than rain. But the winter's snowpack sits slowly, quietly melting in the river's watershed.

A River Runs Through It, Part 2

2008-03-04T21:06:00.006-05:00

Before I return to the photographs from 2006 I should say what's brought that spring's flood to mind. It's the current state of the Ipswich River, which is worrisomely high for the beginning of March. In the stretch between the EBSCO dam and the Choate Bridge, it's been within a few feet of escaping its banks for the last couple of weeks. We've had a winter of near-record total snowfall, now beginning to melt with the grudging return of warmth. The last month has seen snow, rain, sleet, or an unholy combination of them all every week. Tonight we're forecast to see yet another drenching of rain hammer down.

Now, granted, the Mother's Day flood of 2006 was born of torrential rains lasting several days, a continuing storm of epic proportions the like of which we will, I very much hope, not see again anytime soon. But it wouldn't take much more to send the river sliding over its banks into the backyards of the businesses on the river side of Market Street. One can only hope that the floodwaters, if they do come, will not rise to the heights of their 2006 predecessors:

This is a parking lot downslope from Sullivan Insurance's building, now flooded window high on any cars stranded in it. You can see the arch of the Choate Bridge -- what's still above the flood -- between the gray buildings in the distance.

Another view of the same lot. Normally beyond that iron fence the bank drops off several feet to the river's edge. If I were you, I'd heed the sign.

A slightly different angle on the Sullivan's lot. You can see, even from this distance, how ferocious the river's flow is.

This is Natalie's Restaurant, in the same building as but a floor below the Choate Pub, hard by the bridge, with a charming dining space on a deck over the river and in the little courtyard outside its entrance. Within the glass enclosure is the door, beyond the door a set of six steps down into the restaurant, a restaurant filled almost to the ceiling at the height of the flood.

Natalie's Restaurant's dining deck, when the river was done with it and had subsided a few feet. The floor of the restaurant's interior is roughly a yard below the level of the deck.